Avoid the Doctor—For Your Health

How much medical care is too much medical care? It’s a personal decision, of course. But as physician H. Gilbert Welch writes in his new book, Less Medicine, More Health, the more scans, biopsies, and genetic tests you get, the higher the odds that doctors will discover something abnormal about you. After all, Welch says, “We can always find something wrong with patients. The natural part of being human is abnormality.” And chances are, there’s a pharmaceutical or surgical fix to your abnormality—a fix that may ultimately harm you more than the aberrant condition itself. The key, Welch says, is striking the right balance between too much health care and too little. Read an excerpt from his book here.