I was a hypochondriac for decades. I was eventually cured after decades of cropping hypochondria through self-diagnosis of the actual medical condition I had that became formal diagnosis eventually resulting in treatment through some modest lifestyle changes.

I'm a BIG supporter of using things like ChatGPT, google, and sci-hub to do your own medical research because the whole system where some physician diagnoses you based on an extremely limited amount of data collected in a haphazard manner after a few minutes of observation because he's experienced and smart or whatever is incredibly dumb. The way people hold it up as the ethical standard which we cannot deviate from because it would be too dangerous is utterly baffling to me. The status quo totally lacks ethics and mostly serves to line the pockets of a cartel of doctors with a monopoly on access to medication and treatment who often condescendingly think patients are simply too irrational to treat themselves without their help.

I legitimately cannot wait for this field to mature and medical self-help with AI assistance becomes the norm.

I agree with studying the field to help you understand your own health, but I prefer sci hub or any peer reviewed source over an LLM. I'll revise this view as LLMs develop, but right now I'm seeing plausible bs as often as I see good advice.

Fellow hypochondriac here. I was at the point where doctors, hospital, and lab staff would immediately warn new practitioners about me so they wouldn't waste finite medical resources in a small town, and I just completely discontinued normal activities out of terror as a result.

When I finally blacked out and fractured my spine, first responders detected a lifelong cardiac arrhythmia in the back of an ambulance. Only with that knowledge have I been able to receive care and begin to heal emotionally from that abuse.

AI-assisted medicine will prevent many of these mistakes in the future.

Wow, the doctors that tried to block you out completely within their network of friends must have balls of steel, what with zero fear of legal repercussions!

I think it was more a matter of memetics.

I had to see the only available primary doctor to see anyone else, which automatically prompted medical releases that, even if unethical, would have still made it technically legal. If it was an emergency room trip, there were always the same 2-3 physicians there, so they were all fully aware of me from the first episodes. Same deal with labs when you've got only one or two options in town for anything, and they have your consent to release PHI since that's the only way to send results.

I was the same way with this while I travel--it's definitely in the future. I'm working on AI healthcare assistance where you can summarize the conversation and then send it to a real doctor to continue the conversation.

I hope that more founders build and innovate in the field to provide efficiencies throughout the whole system to lower costs and provide high quality care for everyone that needs it.

If you are willing to divulge it, what was the disease, out of curiosity?

So do you not believe actual hypochondriacs exist or something? They do.

Especially the people that will read about diseases and get anxious they have them, and while you can validly say they have anxiety issues they don't have whatever they just read about 99% of the time.

Even if there's a real disease of some sort, you don't want to diagnose with the latest guess in someone that keeps guessing different things. Their treatment needs improvement, but confirmation bias is not how you do it.

Whether hypochondriacs exist really has no bearing on how people feel about their interaction with the medical system.

And it's pretty clear that for many people, they don't feel like their needs are being met.

It has a lot to do with whether "ChatGPT is an automated confirmation bias machine for hypochondriacs" is a valid worry or something that should disqualify you from being a medial professional dealing with patients.

I'd say that people who are accused of hypochondria reliably have anxiety. They don't reliably have imagined illness.

I was also a hypochondriac in high school and college, sleeping 12-16 hours a day and still being completely exhausted! Apparently what I really needed was more exercise. The CPAP machine I eventually got after ignoring my PCPs diagnosis merely serves as a placebo, but very effective nonetheless. I don't bother him with my delusions anymore.

Early this year I had cold symptoms that just could not get away. I was getting sick, recovering and getting sick again. After some 2 - 3 weeks I have accidentally learned about long covid / cfs. I have immediately made myself believe I had this and experienced sharp worsening of symptoms - at some point feeling so tired I thought I was going to pass out. I was doing that pacing thing to the extreme, believing I have no energy, for some 2 weeks, my life was hell of only about 1 - h / day of not laying and doing nothing. Not to mention the severe trauma of thinking that my life is over. Trying to do whatever cognitive activity for more than 10 min resulted in a severe headache. After 2 weeks I got covid, I was still laying down all day anyway but I passed it with minor symptoms. 2 days after I thought, wait a minute, maybe it was all fake symptoms, the sharp increase in symptoms after learning about it, the fact that it was not covid that initiated it in the first place. I felt a bit off, slightly a bit off for a few days but I was able to carry on with my days as usual and then I felt 100% well. The problem is that I have got slightly sick one month later and experienced similar, cannot get well, for some one week.Then 2 months later, I got sick again, and it was the same thing with recovering and feeling sick. It's round and round, feeling shitty for 2- 3 days (able to do work though), feeling good for 2 - 3 days, I have had this for a month now but each time it occurs it has a smaller impact. I have yet to find out what it is for sure, I hope it's all made up, whenever it hits I'm actively trying to convince myself that it's not real and try to ignore it. Anyway, I have learned the hard way that hypohondria is not just anxiety / fear about falling ill for some disease, the imaginary symptoms can be much more severe than "my chest hurts, do I have some heart disease?".