While doing some research on my recent health issues (#673708), I became increasingly aware of a significant gap between the scientific literature and the practice of medicine in clinical settings. At times, the two fields seemed completely unrelated or even at odd. What is considered gospel in scientific circles is often seen as heresy in clinical practice, and vice versa. Possibly, this disconnect is due to a slow-moving Leviathan bureaucracy, but sometimes it seemed deliberately engineered. (We saw glimpses of this during the COVID-19 pandemic, didn't we?)

Consider the case of cholesterol. Depending on who you ask—either someone well-versed in scientific research or a doctor bound by medical protocols—you’ll often get two contradictory perspectives. The former may view cholesterol as a natural adaptation mechanism of the body, while the latter sees it purely as a harmful condition linked to undesirable health outcomes.

I have the impression that the medical profession has become so heavily regulated that doctors now have little room for providing individualised treatments. Their hands are tied by rigid protocols that allow little tolerance for alternative unapproved approaches, and almost always seem to lead to pharmaceutical therapies. The doctors operate under the constant threat of legal repercussions; my own doctor, for instance, repeatedly emphasised the need to "protect herself" from potential liability in case something went wrong, especially because she couldn't make sense of my symptoms...

I left the clinic with doubts on whether I should really take statins and another course of antibiotics, and was firmly convinced to get a second opinion.