If you might ever need to listen to medical advice, you’ll want to read this 2017 Probublica article: When Evidence Says No, But Doctors Say Yes. The site summarizes it:
Years after research contradicts common practices, patients continue to demand them and doctors continue to deliver. The result is an epidemic of unnecessary and unhelpful treatment.
Go read the whole article. If you ever needed a reason to question before accepting some treatement, surely you will find it here.
From Rotten in Denmark: Letting Stress Win: A Commencement Speech.
The best advice and the worst advice I’ve ever gotten were three words long.
The best advice was ‘avoid the treadmill’. It was 2003. I was coming to the end of a master’s degree in a subject (political philosophy) and a city (London) I was ready to leave. I was 22 years old. (…)
I had two months left until I completed my master’s and my visa expired. I had no idea what I was going to do, or even what I wanted to. There was the prudent thing, moving back to the States, getting a job, starting a career, buying a house, leasing a Camry, nothing wrong with that.
There was also, however, something I had come across two weeks earlier while drinking wine and Googling Nordic underwear models: Universities in Scandinavia are free.
I told Rebecca all this (minus the Googling), and that I had found a program in Aarhus, Denmark—a master’s degree that as soon as I said it out loud I realized sounded even vaguer and more destitution-promoting than the master’s I already had.
‘European studies!’ I said.
Rebecca asked if I had ever been to Denmark, and what was my logic for considering this an option. I admitted I had none, it just sounded cool and I wanted to try it.
‘So I have to decide,’ I said. ‘Prudent, or Denmark.’
‘Mike,’ she said. ‘This is an easy one: Avoid the treadmill.’ [continue]