Part I
Spotting and Assessing Illness: The Basics
In this part . . .
Dealing with medical problems doesn’t come naturally to many people and can be quite scary if you’re not used to it. The good news is that things can be different, and armed with a bit of basic knowledge you can identify and assess many illnesses yourself.
Part I is all about basic strategies for approaching and managing almost any health problem sensibly. This part gives you an overview and insight into how your body works, and you can find guidance on where to get further help and information when you need it as well as advice on how to access the right health services for you.
Chapter 1
Understanding Your Health Problems
In This Chapter
Recognising and approaching health problems in yourself
Discovering more about your body
Health problems are part of life. The fact is that everyone gets ill sometimes – though hopefully not too often – and when you develop a medical symptom you need to decide what to do about it. For example, you may choose to see your pharmacist, consult your doctor, go to the nearest Accident & Emergency (A&E) department – or, in the worst case, phone for an ambulance. You may even choose to do nothing at all.
So that you stay healthy and get the best available health advice and treatment when you fall ill, you need to be able to make sensible decisions about your health. Doing so can be tricky and occasionally a bit scary. Not surprisingly, you can feel out of your depth all too easily. Most people successfully make decisions about their healthcare just by using common sense, but instances do occur when you’re not quite sure what to do or your health problems develop gradually and you start to think about getting medical help.
These situations are where Diagnosing Your Health Symptoms For Dummies can help. In the same way that you don’t have to be a professional mechanic or engineer to identify and deal with simple problems relating to your car or dishwasher, you don’t have to be a doctor to be able to recognise common or potentially serious health problems or to have the confidence to decide what to do about them. You do have to be a health professional, though, to deal with and treat a great many conditions, and so knowing when you can treat an illness yourself and when to seek medical advice is an essential skill. In this chapter I introduce you to ways in which you can approach your health symptoms sensibly (I cover some useful tips, tricks, tools and strategies in more detail in Chapters 2 to 4). I provide a brief overview of your body’s anatomy and how certain parts of it work, so you can more easily understand the health problems that I cover elsewhere in this book.
Thinking Like a Medic: You Can Do It!
Medical problems come in all shapes and sizes. Some are easy to recognise, simple or harmless, whereas others may not be so obvious, are complex, or even dangerous. Telling the difference between them can be quite tricky, and making a formal medical diagnosis is best left to the professionals.
Whenever you develop a health problem, you automatically make a diagnosis yourself – whether you know it or not. If you develop a headache, for example, you may decide to ignore it for a few days and see what happens, or take some simple painkillers to relieve your symptoms. But what if the headache gets worse, or if it’s very severe? When – and how – can you tell whether you should seek medical advice? This section aims to help you make these types of decisions by thinking like a medic – so that you can approach a variety of common or potentially serious problems appropriately. I give you some tools to help you make more informed decisions about your health and decide when to seek help, explaining the symptoms of common conditions and how to spot signs of serious illness.
Reacting to medical problems sensibly
Everyone reacts to medical problems differently, but broadly speaking, people often behave in one of the following three ways. Think whether any of these approaches sounds like the way you usually deal with health concerns:
Dealing with a medical problem appropriately: Most people first have a quick think about possible causes of their health problem and then deal with the problem themselves, seeking advice or treatment from a health professional such as a pharmacist, nurse or doctor when necessary.
Having a ‘stiff-upper-lip’ attitude: Other people are stoical, thinking that they know what’s going on and that nothing needs to be done, or can be done. Stoics tend to ‘wait and see’ for a long time even when they’re quite unwell, their symptoms get worse rather than better and others tell them to call the doctor because they’re worried about them – sometimes stoics behave this way with great detriment to their health.
Worrying far too much: Some people are preoccupied with their body functions and tend to think that even minor problems must be due to a potentially serious medical condition, meaning that they continually feel anxious about their health. This worrying makes them ‘trigger-happy’ about approaching health professionals – mainly for reassurance.
Having to deal with medical problems in yourself and other people can feel quite scary, and you can be forgiven for panicking or calling a health professional straight away. However, to think like a medic, a better idea is to: Stay calm: Try not to get too anxious over a symptom – the vast majority of health problems aren’t due to serious illness. Don’t make things worse for you and other people by worrying unnecessarily, but don’t delay seeking medical advice and reassurance when you need it.
Take your time: Apart from acutely life-threatening emergency situations, such as bleeding profusely or having a major heart attack (see Chapter 5 for more info), you normally have a bit of time to assess your health problem yourself in a basic way. So try not to panic!
Throughout this book you can find situations where not worrying and waiting to see is appropriate and, in contrast, when getting medical help fast is best.
Acquiring basic skills in self-diagnosis
When you’re in the right frame of mind, you can approach health problems in the same way that you tackle any other problem in your daily life, assessing your symptoms in the following way: 1. Ask questions: Asking yourself a number of questions relevant to your health problems can help you to narrow down the causes of your sympto...
