WARNING AGAINST SELF-DIAGNOSIS

Medicine science is coming full circle and nowadays the emphasis is again on finding natural cures for various ailments. In this scenario, finding a therapist who will be sympathetic towards natural therapies should not be a problem. Juice therapy can safely be used in conjunction with other traditional methods of therapy in most cases. However, it is important to seek help from a registered medical practitioner for health problems and not to indulge in self-diagnosis.

Sale of antifungal medications to treat Candida or yeast infections, skyrocketed when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the over-the-counter (OTC) sales.

Around half of the number of women who used OTC products to treat what they assumed were vaginal yeast infections misdiagnosed their condition. These women might have had other infections with symptoms that replicated those of yeast infections or no infections at all.

A study conducted among women in Augusta, Georgia; Philadelphia; Detroit; Charleston and Omaha revealed:

• 33% of them were able to accurately self-diagnose their condition
  
• 20% had a yeast infection as well as another type of vaginitis
  
• Over 30% women had completely different infections
  
• Almost 14% women had no infection at all.
  

Some of the common plants that are used to facilitate juice therapy are given in this section along with their botanical and common names, and the ailments that they may be used for.

  Because of the fact that there are so many different medical ailments that an individual can suffer from combined with the fact that the factors that influence the development of these conditions are prevalent in our day to day lives means that it is important to have a basic understanding of some of the more common medical conditions to aid in self diagnosis which will then lead to faster treatment of the condition.

However, self diagnosis is not as straightforward as it may seem as it is not uncommon for a person to misdiagnose a condition and then spend a lot of time treating the wrong condition – thereby allowing for more time for the actual present medical condition to develop even further.

One of the most common mistakes that people make when it comes to self diagnosis of a medical condition is that they tend to treat the symptoms of the condition rather than treating any other medical condition that may be an underlying cause. For instance, while a fever is a common occurrence, it is important to remember that the elevated body temperature is merely a result of the presence of some kind of fungus or bacteria in the body, but could also easily be the result of some medical condition or the other. One of the most common mistakes that people make during self diagnosis and treatment is to treat the fever alone. This allows for the underlying medical condition, whatever it may be, to progress even further.

Self diagnosis of mental health conditions is an even harder task because of the fact that the symptoms are likely to be a little more complicated if present. The symptoms provided by physical ailments are usually very straightforward and can be seen as well as felt through the sensation of touch. However, mental ailments are not as easy to diagnose as the symptoms will usually only develop in the more advanced stages of the condition. Moreover, one should not ignore the fact that any mental complications are likely to cause more serious long term effects of the condition.

Self diagnosis is an art to indulge one’s self only in occasions when there is no time to get help, or if the individual has enough experience as well as information on what he or she is looking at. Given that misdiagnosis is an occurrence that takes place relatively regularly in the trained medical field as well, it does not help if it starts to become very prominent in the self diagnosis region of medical treatment. When it comes to proper self diagnosis, one should also have a decent understanding of the various medications that can be purchased over the counter to help treat the ailments. When there is the possibility of having the ailment examined by a trained medical professional, self diagnosis should not be the first option considered as some medical ailments may require the additional layer of certain medical tests that cannot be carried out by someone that does not have the technical knowhow or experience.