Something You Should Know - How Pride Compassion and Gratitude Drive Success & Using the Internet For Better Health

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Why do people kiss under the mistletoe? When did that all start? This episode begins with a brief history of the mistletoe-kissing tradition. https://ourcommunitynow.com/local-culture/the-myth-behind-the-mistletoe You have never heard a discussion about pride, gratitude and compassion like this one. Psychology professor David Desteno of Northeastern University joins me to explain how these three emotions can fuel your personal and business success as well as create better relationships. We seldom talk about emotions as tools for success but you will find this discussion fascinating and useful for your own life. David is author of the book Emotional Success: The Power of Gratitude, Compassion, and Pride (https://amzn.to/3FFW3sI). And he has a TED Talk about pride you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VML4VmSlCc&t=1190s There are always a few people on you Christmas holiday gift list who are hard to shop for. Listen as I explain a few very easy yet thoughtful gift ideas that are sure to be appreciated.  We’ve likely all gone to the internet to look up health information or try and diagnose some symptom we’re experiencing. After all there is a lot of great health information online that could be useful. However, how you use that information you find is really crucial according to cardiologist Dr. Kapil Parakh author of the book Searching for Health: The Smart Way to Find Information Online (https://amzn.to/3CORNVP). Listen as he offers some great strategies to help you better navigate the internet for the right information and then how to use it to improve your health and give you peace of mind. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Grab NordVPN’s Cyber Month Deal! Go to https://nordvpn.com/SOMETHING or use code SOMETHING to get up to 73% off your NordVPN Plan + a bonus gift! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Design like a pro with Canva Pro! Get a FREE 45-day extended trial. Visit https://canva.me/something Go to https://FarewayMeatMarket.com promo code: SYSK to get $100 off The Butcher's Holiday Collection and site wide free shipping! Go to https://backcountry.com/sysk to get 15% OFF your first full-priced purchase! Discover matches all the cash back you’ve earned at the end of your first year! Learn more at https://discover.com/match Visit https://ferguson.com for the best in all of your plumping supply needs! https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Metro Links and Cross Links are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Today on Something You Should Know, why do people kiss under the mistletoe and since when? Then compassion, gratitude, and pride are keys to your success. Yet pride has been called a sin. You have to have some pride and take pride in what you're doing because that is what would give you the boost to persevere. If you have no pride, no sense of pride,

if you believe that other people are always better than you, it basically puts up roadblocks to you trying to work hard and develop those skills in the first place. Also, some great Christmas gift ideas for the hard to shop for and how to better use online medical information to improve your health. Let's say you had a discomfort in your back and then you start reading stuff online, you're like, oh, if you have back pain and chest pain, you start thinking, wait a second,

I might have had that twinge in my chest too the other day. And you can actually talk yourself into whatever scary thing you're reading about. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind.

Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, it's time for Something You Should Know. And now with Thanksgiving out of the way, people are getting into the Christmas spirit and decorating for Christmas.

And amongst those decorations might be some mistletoe. You know, mistletoe wasn't always for kissing. It all started a long time ago with the Scandinavians. They considered mistletoe to be a plant of peace. If enemies happened to pass under the plant, they had to lay down their arms and call a truce, at least until the next day. Gradually, over the years, the custom gave way to the kissing tradition. The earliest written record of kissing under the mistletoe as a Christmas tradition

was cited in Time magazine. Historian Mark Forsyth, author of A Christmas Cornucopia, doesn't know why kissing under the mistletoe started, but he does know that the tradition began between 1720 and 1784 in England. In the U.S., the Christmas mistletoe tradition was introduced by writer Washington Irving. His book, titled The Sketchbook, published in 1820, was a bestseller in its time.

Irving had returned from England and was smitten by this strange and unique Christmas tradition that he'd seen in Europe. In his book, he explains that mistletoe is to be hung up in the kitchen, and young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it. But they must pluck a berry off each time. When the berries are gone, the kiss fest is over. And that is something you should know. Pride, gratitude, and compassion, as it turns out,

are feelings that can be very powerful to help motivate you, help you succeed, and develop strong, positive relationships with others. Still, there is some confusion about pride, gratitude, and compassion. After all, pride has been called a sin. In fact, it's been called the sin from which all others arise. But there is more than one kind of pride, and there are ways to use the feelings of pride, gratitude, and compassion in a very positive, constructive, even profitable way, according to David DeSteno. He is professor of psychology at Northeastern University and author of a book called Emotional Success. And he also has a really interesting TED Talk about pride that you can see on YouTube.

Hi, David. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me on. So pride, gratitude, and compassion. Let's start with pride because, as I mentioned, it's sometimes called a sin. So how do you look at pride? Is pride an emotion, would you say? Yeah, it is an emotion, but it's got a little bit of a bad rap, as you're kind of saying, because I think we tend to conflate the idea of pride with being

arrogant or having too much hubris or being self-important. But it is a distinct emotion, and it's that emotion we feel when we believe our abilities or our performance is superior and is being acknowledged. You see it develop initially with children when they do something and they'll look to mom and dad for either approval, like, yeah, that's very good. I'm proud of you or disapproval, like, no, you shouldn't do that. But it is definitely an emotion that serves the purpose of making us want to keep developing skills and abilities that are valuable. Because it feels good, right? I mean, pride doesn't, when you feel pride, don't you feel pretty good about yourself? Yeah, it's a very rewarding emotion.

In fact, it's because it feels so good that it kind of pushes us or nudges us along to do things that are difficult. You know, if you're an athlete, it's what's going to make you get up at maybe four in the morning to go to practice. If you're working on a project you're really proud of, it's what will keep you going working late into the evening, even though the actual practicing or working itself doesn't feel very good in the moment. So pride feels really good.

The problems come when that feeling of pride is miscalibrated to what your abilities actually are. So what does that look like? In psychology, we typically talk about two types of pride, which are basically authentic pride, which is when you feel pride for skills you actually have, if you're a wonderful musician, if you're a great athlete, even if you're somebody who's just learning, let's say, a new artistic skill or a student performing well on a test, if your performance or your ability is actually viewed as good objectively, people around are impressed by that. And that's an authentic experience of pride. Where it becomes problematic is you still feel that same sense of pride, like you're really good and valued, but your views of your own

abilities don't match reality. So you start assuming just because you're good at one thing, you're good at everything. And that's where people look at you. And when there's a mismatch between your ability and your expression of pride, that's where kind of the saying, pride goeth before the fall comes from. That can lead people to think you're arrogant. And that usually puts a dent in how other people view us. Well, but how big a problem is this? I mean, do a lot of people have this sense of false pride? It's a good question. I don't know the numbers. I don't think anyone does on what percentage of people have this, but you can clearly see it. The easiest way to see it is look at politicians. You will often see this expressed in lots of ways, but I'm sure we all know people in our offices

or in our classrooms who have a self-important view of their own abilities that doesn't match with everything. And, you know, it's important that we view our abilities always a little critically, right? That is, just because I'm good at something doesn't mean that I'm good at everything. And I should think about that and carefully look at that rather than just make the assumption that, hey, everybody likes me, I must know what I'm doing. I know people though, who, from my opinion, maybe aren't as great as they clearly think they are. But there's something about that exuding of confidence that is a little bit contagious. I guess it's kind of the fake it

till you make it. But in other words, if you act like you're good at something, and you're pretty good at it, maybe not as good as you think you are, it still comes off okay. Yeah, it does. And this is the thing that sometimes surprises people. We tend to think of pride as the seventh sin, actually. If you look at Christian theology, not only is pride one of the seventh sins, but it's the seventh and most deadly. But in reality, it actually is kind of attractive for the reasons you're saying. So we do experiments in our lab where we'll take somebody, give them false information based on tests that we give them and say they have a really wonderful ability at problem solving.

And we'll then put them in a group and they will start to kind of be dominant within that group because they believe they've got this ability and they're exuding confidence. And what happens is everybody else in the group views them as a good leader. They see that as attractive. This person is exuding confidence. They must have something. And so we value that because we all want to work with people who are competent and who are good. The problem is if your view of your own abilities gets a little too far from what the objectives are, then people start to look and say you're being a little arrogant.

So if you have some ability, and maybe you're slightly overestimating that, that's okay. But if you're projecting confidence, and then when time comes to deliver, and you don't have any of that competence that you're exuding pride in, people will not only have their hopes in you dashed, but they'll actively begin to dislike you. It also seems that when you're feeling pride about something you've done, it acts as a motivator to do more of it. And that's why, you know, I think there is this idea of fake it till you make it. And people will cut you some slack. And convincing yourself that you're good at something also helps you want to do it more. If you're taking pride, you're not only

suggesting to others that you have this ability, but you're suggesting to yourself that you do too. And that can give you a nudge to keep working hard. But if it becomes clear that you're really intentionally faking it, think about those instances when we see people try to fake it till they make it, but they don't quite make it because somebody finds out before they get there that they've over-promised in their abilities. That can be a major career or even friendship ender. My sense though is that it's more common a problem that people don't have enough pride than people who have too much.

Yeah, I think that's right. Because pride is what allows us to take some chances to work harder. So, you know, we do studies in my lab where we bring people in and we have them do these really difficult problem solving tests. And then some of them, we will tell them, just randomly choose some of them, you know, your performance is really good. This is very impressive. And then we can tell how much pride they feel by that. And then they will actually continue to work harder because they feel like they've got some leg up. This is something they can do. They will work harder and longer on these very

effortful tasks. And you can see that in athletics, you can see that in working at the office. And so you have to have some pride and take pride in what you're doing, because that is what will give you the boost to persevere in the face of difficulties. If you have no pride, no sense of pride, if you believe that you don't have the skills that are necessary or that other people are always better than you. It basically puts up roadblocks to you trying to work hard and develop those skills in the first place. We're talking about the rather interesting and amazing impact of pride, compassion, and gratitude. And we're talking with David DeSteno, a professor at Northeastern University and author

of the book, Emotional Success. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines.

Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit FlyPorter.com and actually enjoy economy. So David, you say that feelings of gratitude, compassion, and pride are easier to generate than willpower and self-denial and sheer grit. So can you explain what that means? Yeah. So, you know, grit is this personality,

trait, or capacity that allows people to persevere in the face of challenges. And one way that people often do this is by putting their nose to the grindstone and saying, I'm just going to work really hard. And that can work. But what happens is if you're always trying to work hard at something

and you're forcing yourself to do it with strength of will, you are going to fail. If you just look at the data on New Year's resolutions, right? There's things that people want to do. By the second week of January, 25% of New Year's resolutions are already broken. By the end of the year, only 8% have been kept. And it's because if you're willing yourself to do something, it's hard to keep up that motivation constantly. Now, if you take pride in working at something, if you get that emotional reward, as we said, feeling pride feels good, then you're not fighting. If you're taking pride in something, it makes you want to do it. It feels enjoyable, even though it's difficult in the moment, you're interpreting that effort as joyful, as getting you where you want to be.

And so your body and mind aren't in this tension between each other. They're both pushing you to want to persevere. And what we find is that when people are feeling pride, working hard at it to get to garner abilities, to hone abilities, isn't viewed as a struggle. It's viewed as something desirable. And if we desire something, it becomes easier to pursue it. Well, take the example, since you talked about New Year's resolutions of losing weight. And as people lose weight, it would seem they would feel a lot of pride that they're actually accomplishing their goal when they step

on the scale and they see the number is lower than it used to be. That feels good. However, chocolate cake feels pretty good too. And so in other words, it's not just because you're taking pride in your accomplishments doesn't mean you're not going to succumb to temptation. No, that's right. And the point is moment to moment throughout our daily lives, we're feeling different emotions. And the trick with emotions like pride or compassion or gratitude is to realize that you are not at their whim. They don't just come over you. You can curate your own emotional states and use them as tools. So when you're sitting in front of that piece of chocolate cake that someone is offering to you,

and you don't want to eat it, you're going to have this desire. Oh, it would feel so wonderful to eat this. I would love the taste of it. But if in that moment, you can call up the pride that you feel in having lost two pounds the week before. That will give you the patience and strengthen your willpower to not go for it. So it's not that you felt pride this morning when you got on the scale, that's going to help you not eat the cake. It's calling that emotion again to mind so that you feel it in the moment of temptation to fight the craving you

have. What about gratitude and compassion? We hear a lot about, you know, you need to be grateful, you should keep a gratitude diary, you know, be more compassionate, it'll make you happier. What do you say? I completely agree with those and so does the science. The reason why is if, if you think about what all of these emotions do, pride, gratitude, and compassion, what they're all doing is making you willing to sign up, sacrifice something in the moment for greater good down the line. So if I'm grateful, you know, Michael, if, if, if you loan me $10 and I don't pay you back, I'm ahead. But if I don't pay you back, you're not going to want to interact with me again in the long run. And so that gratitude, I feel, reminds me to part with that extra money when I have it and pay you back.

Compassion pushes me to be willing to help somebody else who's in pain or in distress, to give them time, money, effort, a shoulder to cry on, something that will help them. Pride makes me more willing to accept difficulties in the moment to achieve a goal down the line. And in each case, what those emotions are doing is helping us delay immediate gratification for something that will benefit our future, closer relationships with other people, having people view us as more value partners, whatever it might be. And what the experimental research shows is in each case, those emotions give us feelings of patience. They help us not give in to temptations or craving for our own immediate gratification. And so if I'm feeling

gratitude, not only is it going to make me want to help other people, even at some cost to myself, it's going to make me also by that patience, more willing to help my own future self by not spending extra money, by not eating chocolate cake when I shouldn't. And you mentioned grit. We talked a bit about grit, but is that something people are born with or can you summon it up or what? No, it's not something you're born with, but it is kind of a stable trait that requires you to overcome some type of temptation in the moment, to overeat, to sit on the couch rather than exercise, to go out rather than work on a project or practice your instrument. You're exhibiting grit. The question is, what's the best way to get that grit to persevere? Yes, you can do it through willpower, but that takes a lot

of effort and a lot of stress because you're always in a state of tension. You're using your willpower to overcome some desire for immediate gratification. If you cultivate these emotions like gratitude and compassion and pride, they kind of tamp down that emotion. They change what your brain values to make it value what's better for you in the long run. And so you're not fighting to overcome a temptation for immediate gratification. That temptation just kind of melts away. And therefore you're not in a state of constant stress or battling. And so grit is important, but I think relying on using emotional tools to support it is a better way to get there.

In your TED Talk, you talk about cheating. Talk about cheating. Yeah, cheating is another place where we tend to give in to temptation, right? So if I'm going to cheat on an exam or a task, what I'm doing is I'm getting some immediate benefit. And usually we assume we're not going to get caught because if we get caught, then there's going to be a long-term cost to it. But still, we know it's wrong. And in our studies, for example, 100% of people will say it's wrong to cheat. If we give them anonymity, we'll let them flip a coin and say if you get heads,, you get more money than if you get tails and then ask them what they got. And we can tell if they're lying or not, you know, 50% of them will cheat. They think, oh, it's not hurting

anyone. I can get more money if I say I got heads. And they do when we make them feel gratitude, for example, it cuts the rate of cheating in half. And the reason why is these emotions, gratitude, compassion, and pride push us to overcome immediate desires for immediate gratification. And the reason they do that is to help us form strong relationships in the long run. No one wants to be a friend or a spouse or a coworker of someone who cheats. And so the reason you feel gratitude is to make sure you pay that, you pay favors back instead of accepting them and then not paying them back. And so you can see how these emotions help us overcome desires for immediate gratification to behave in ways that benefit the greater good. But sometimes that greater good isn't somebody else. Sometimes that greater good is your own future self. And that's why I encourage people to cultivate these emotions on a daily

basis, because doing so is kind of like a booster shot for grit or a booster shot for self-control. And yet in the busy day-to-day life, it's hard to sit down and go, I need to cultivate some gratitude and compassion. Who does that? Well, you probably do that. Yeah, although not as much as I probably should. But here's where the genius of using rituals or habits comes into play. You're right. Who's going to remember, oh, I should sit down and do gratitude journaling now, or how do I become more compassionate? Well, if you make it a habit daily, every day to just when you wake up in the morning, think about three things that you're grateful for. Wonderful. If you're a person who practices meditation or mindfulness, we have experimental data showing that that increases people's spontaneous compassion.

There's lots of ways that you can do it. Even when you're walking down the impulse aisle of the store on Black Friday, just take a moment and think about what you're grateful for. And the trick, right, is that you don't have to write this out. It doesn't have to be done long form. But the trick is don't think about the same five things that you're grateful for. And the trick, right, is that you don't have to write this out. It doesn't have to be done long form. But the trick is don't think about the same five things that you're grateful for, because you're going to get habituated to them. Think about the minor things that happened to you. Did somebody hold the door for you today? Did somebody give you directions? Did somebody let you in on the highway? When we do this in our lab, even these small little minor things of feeling gratitude, increase people's self-control in ways that they spend less money. They make more

financial decisions to save money for the future. They help other people more. They're more generous and they're more patient. And so if you work it into your life, even every morning, it will help. We have data where we followed people for three weeks and every day we measured how grateful they felt. And there was a strong correlation between just how grateful they felt across those three weeks pride and other than impulse control? I mean, what else does it do for you by being compassionate and grateful? Well, here's where you can see the link between impulse control and social relationships. So, you know, there's many of your listeners are probably aware of this study done many years ago by the psychologist Walter Mischel called the marshmallow test, where he would ask, he would put down a marshmallow in front of a preschooler and say, you can have this now. But if you wait till I get back, you can have two, right?

We do this with adults. Here's some money now. You can either have this money now, or you can wait three weeks and we'll give you more. Which would you prefer? Right. You can either have this money now or you can wait three weeks and we'll give you more. Which would you prefer? Right. It's basically if you have little impulse control, you take what you want. Now you can't wait.

What all of this work shows is not only is it better for you financially and academically if you have impulse control, but it's also better for you socially. Right. People who have better impulse control have stronger interpersonal relationships. They're less lonely. They're viewed by their friends as more loyal. And they tend just to have more satisfying lives. And so by cultivating these emotions, they're going to nudge you in ways to share with others more, to extend help to others more. All of those things come back and enrich our own lives. And there's data to show that. And so by cultivating these emotions, you're basically building your own character. By helping you have more impulse control, not only are you going to be better at your job or reaching your financial goals, but you're going to act in ways that are more pro-social, more cementing and strengthening of those social relationships that we all have that sustain us in difficult times.

Well, I've never heard anyone discuss these emotions of pride, gratitude, and compassion in the way that you do. And it's really interesting to hear not only how they work, but how powerful they can be in our own development. David DeSteno has been my guest. He's a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, and the name of his book is Emotional Success. There's a link to that book in the show notes.

And he has a TED Talk about pride that's really interesting, and I'll put a link to the TED Talk in the show notes as well. Thank you, David. Thanks for having me on, Mike. It's been a fun conversation. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests,

but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. I bet whenever you have a question or a concern about some health or medical problem or some symptom you're having, you head to the Internet to see if you can find out what it is and what to do about it, or if you should go see the doctor. And there certainly is a lot of information on just about any health-related topic you can imagine online. But some of the information may not be so accurate.

Some of it seems conflicting with other information. You may see something online that sort of sounds like what you have, but not really what you have. So what you do with all that information you uncover online really matters, according to cardiologist Dr. Kapil Parak, who is author of the book Searching for Health, The Smart Way to Find Information Online and Put it to Use. Hi, doctor. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hey, thanks so much for having me. So what's your sense of how people use the Internet to get health-related information and what they do with it? What's your sense of the lay of the land? In terms of overall search patterns, health-related

searches make anywhere from 5% to 7% of all internet searches. And if you look at the studies around this, it's hard to quantify exactly how much, but what you find is some percentage of people are actually able to use it effectively. Some people have better numeracy or health literacy than others and are able to use that information to advocate for themselves. But many others either get misdirected or confused, or in the worst case scenario, they sort of end up making a decision that's potentially harmful to them. Do you sense that people use the internet to diagnose themselves as opposed to gather information so maybe they can discuss it with their doctor? Or are they using the internet to replace their doctor, to self-diagnose? Yeah, my sense is that, you know, oftentimes people are

actually just trying to make decisions. And the decision is often in the is that, you know, oftentimes people are actually just trying to make decisions. And the decision is often in the frame of what you said, which is, do I need to go see a doctor? Is this serious? Do I have to go right now? Can I wait a week? Can I try something at home until I feel better? You know, what does this involve? And people use the internet at all stages of their health journey, not just when they have symptoms. So, you know, there are studies that show that people use the internet before going to the doctors, during the doctor's visit, like even in the waiting also try to make sense of the information that they get at the doctor's office and kind of what their condition means and how to deal with it. Well, I think everyone has heard the caution that you can't believe everything you see on the Internet, and that certainly pertains to health information as well. Do you think that is a big problem, that there is a lot of misinformation on the internet, and that by people having misinformation, that's causing problems? It is a fair statement. I think

that the challenge is you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So on the one hand, completely agree, not everything online is reliable, and you can't trust it all for sure. But there is a lot of reliable information online. And I think one of the challenges that is that most people don't have the frameworks to understand how to use it. So let's take your example of you're searching for a symptom to begin with. So when most people search for things online, they're typically looking for one answer. You need to go to a restaurant for dinner, so you look at different types of cuisine, location, maybe price, but then you end up on one place to go, right? Most doctors actually aren't looking for one answer to explain your symptoms.

What we work off is something called a differential diagnosis, which is a list of possibilities of what it could be. You came in with the sniffles, most likely you have allergies, but it could be the flu, it could be COVID. And that little list is my differential diagnosis. And the way I then manage this differential diagnosis is to tackle not just the top most likely thing, which could be like allergies, but the most dangerous thing, which would be like allergies, but the most dangerous thing, which would be something like COVID and make sure I test for it. So that's just a different framework that physicians use. And by providing these kinds of frameworks, I'm hoping that the book helps people understand how to process that information in a way that's closer to how physicians process the information and hopefully empowers them to make health decisions better.

You know how I often use the internet, and I bet a lot of other people do this, which is in contrast to what you just described, which is a much better way. And that is, I look for information that sounds right. Oh yeah, that's the thing I've got or that's the symptom I have. And that's where I stop. I mean, I look at that and I go, OK, well, there it is. It's right there. So I'm done.

So what does it say to do when I do that? And I guess that's a problem. That's exactly one of the things we advise, right? So one of the key questions we recommend people ask is, what else could it be? And that's not just something, you know, to tell people like yourself, but actually that's something that medical students are taught. I still remember when I was taught as a resident, you know, I was pretty sure I knew what the diagnosis was, and my mentor stopped me for a second and said, that's great. You've got, you think you've got the diagnosis. Now put that aside and start over and think what else could it be? And then, and then come up with

your list of possibilities. There's a term for this, which is, it's called closing the diagnostic funnel too early. And it's actually a cause of misdiagnoses in, in medicine. And so, you know, this little tool that, you know, of asking what else could it be, could be useful not just to doctors, but also to the lay public. Yeah, well, I've heard that advice to use when you go to the doctor, when the doctor said, you have a cold, you could say, yeah, well, what else could it be? And ask him to reconsider, because I suspect often in the doctor's office, you know, you guys are in a hurry, you got to move to the next patient and

you're going to rush just as likely as I am. Absolutely. And that's one of the key things. How do you make use of that doctor's visit effectively? Now, if you come in saying, doc, I read this online, I'm pretty sure I have this. And I think I need XYZ medicine. It's very hard for the clinician to then try and collaborate with you on that because you've sort of got your mind made up on not just what you have, but what you need. And they sort of have to spend some time first walking you back of, okay, well, what is it that you have? What are your symptoms? And then finally figuring out what's going on. And that takes actually more time and is a relatively inefficient way to do it. Instead, what we recommend is doing some of the doctor's work ahead of time for them.

Summarize your symptoms, summarize kind of using the same frameworks that doctors use, and then they can quickly look through that and that speeds up their time for data gathering. And then let them do their job and process all the information that you've given them and see if they agree with you or not. And if they don't, they'll let you know. And if they do, then that's great. You've helped them, you know, move things along. But I think there's ways, simple ways that we could, you know, just change that interaction so that it's much more collaborative. And in the end, you know, everyone wants the patient to get better,

including the doctor. So it's a win-win all around. So a lot of things people look up on the internet, it's not to prepare for a doctor visit, because it hasn't risen to that level. It's not necessary to go to the doctor. It's just, I kind of want to know what this thing is on my arm, and maybe I should put some goo on it and I'm not going to go to make a doctor's appointment for it. For one thing, by the time I get an appointment, it'll be gone anyway. So not much point in that. So I just want to know what it is. If you then go to like a reliable, what's considered reliable, WebMD kind of website, are you pretty safe? Is that not a bad way to go? I think it's perfectly reasonable. I think what, you know, especially if you stick with the sort of more reliable websites, and we sort of list them out as, you know, authoritative websites

like the CDC or the NIH or things like that, but also like hospital websites like Mayo Clinic and, you know, certainly places like that you can take a look. I think once you do and you come up with your list of possibilities, look through that list and see, is this just, you know, a pimple that I don't have to worry about or is this a mole, for example, and I have a history of cancer in my family and I should think about, you know, why is this new mole here and actually follow up with your primary care doctor. The other thing that we mentioned is that it isn't just a doctor that can help you, right? So nowadays, there are many other options. So many insurance companies, for example, and even doctor's offices have triage lines where you can just speak to a nurse who can walk you through what's going on. There's options for a telemedicine visit. And you could have somebody over, you know, a video call,

talk you through whatever you're dealing with. So I think it's one of those things where if it is likely to be something that's not too serious, and you want to try and manage it at home, that's fine. I think it's, you know, make sure you ask yourself, what else could it be? What are the red flags in this situation that I should be looking out for based on what I've read, so that if these things happen, then I'll escalate this to the next level. And what about medications? Because now, and I know I've heard other doctors talk about how they're not real thrilled with the idea that a lot of pharmaceutical companies are marketing direct to consumer, because then the consumer shows up at the doctor's office and says, well, I saw this ad for this medication. Sounds like it's for me. And it may or may not be, but as you were talking

about earlier, the patient's mind is already made up. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And I think when I first saw one of these ads, the thing that came to my mind was nobody comes to my office saying, doctor, the American Heart Association recommends every patient with a heart attack should have an aspirin and I'm not on one, right? And that's the conversation we should be having and not with some ad you saw on television. Each disease often has a professional society guideline on what the professional recommendations are for that disease. Think of it as a cheat sheet. So if you were coaching a little league baseball team and you had access to a document where all the major league

baseball coaches had put down their best tips and tricks in one place on how to coach baseball, and you had access to that, think how useful that could be in, you know, as you're trying to help out your own little team. So what happens for each disease is the best minds in the country, and sometimes around the world, will get together and write down how they think that disease should be treated. And if you skim these documents, you can quickly pick up that these are the main recommendations, the top line stuff, as it were. And I think that's the sort of conversation to have with your doctor. You say, look, I came across this when reading and in the guidelines, and it seems like it's relevant for me. What do you think? It turns out

that if you do studies in the US, depending on the condition, 20 to 40% of people, for one reason or another, are not on all the guideline recommended treatments and so i think this is the sort of thing where being a little proactive can actually result in something that could help you manage your disease better so say that statistic again depending on the condition about 20 to 40 percent of people are not on guideline recommended therapies for their condition. Why? It's a number of reasons. Sometimes it's just error, like human error, forgot to do it. Sometimes it's miscommunication, went to the hospital, stopped this medication, someone forgot to restart it when you were back to normal. Some of it is truly that people

have allergies or had side effects, et cetera, because the research, it's hard to parse everything out. But oftentimes, it's just been overlooked. So I wonder how this plays into all of this. Before the internet, before information was available on the internet, you'd notice something or you'd have a symptom and you'd kind of, you had really no place to go to figure it out without going to the doctor. So you just kind of blew it off and it went away and life went on and, you know, the sun came up the next day and everything was fine. But now that all that information is available, I wonder how many people get all worked up

about little things that they probably don't need to because they have the access to the information to see what it could be. There's sort of two extremes that we can talk about. So on one end of it is a condition called cyberchondria, which is sort of cyber for internet and the chondria coming from hypochondria. And so, you know, if somebody has a tendency to be a hypochondriac, and now they have all this information online, they definitely can get freaked out by it. We actually used to see this phenomenon in medical students a lot. And as a medical student, you read about all these crazy diseases,

and then you have a mundane symptom, and you get convinced, oh, wait, I read about this disease, maybe it could be this, and you sort of get all worked up about it. And now, thanks to the internet, many people can experience that. So there's certainly that part of it. I think there's also a different aspect to that, though, which is, if you just search for, you know, the internet saved my life or something like that, you'll find a lot of stories of people who were, you know, not concerned about a symptom, but happened to look it up online and found that it was a, you know, oftentimes, for example, women heart attacks present differently, or when you get blood clots in the legs, it can go to the lungs, it can be quite dangerous. And people look that up, and then realize, wait a second, this might not be something that I

wait for the sun to come up on and actually seek help. So you certainly see both ends of the spectrum where the internet does help some people. And we want to increase that. And then where it does cause harm, we want to try and help reduce that. And there's some strategies we've put in to help with that part of it too. And those strategies include things like? One simple thing you could do is just write it down ahead of time. So if you think about symptoms, human memory is not very good. It's malleable in terms of thinking about symptoms. So let's say you had a discomfort in your back and then you start reading stuff online. You're like, well, if you have back pain and chest pain, then you thinking wait a second I might have had that twinge in my chest too the other day

and you can actually talk yourself into whatever um you know scary thing you're reading about so one thing we recommend is just write it down ahead of time before you even start searching and describe it in some level of detail and then you go online and you try and match your description to what you're reading. And if you didn't write it down, it probably wasn't there. And you're trying to like stretch to fit whatever you're reading. And that helps create a little bit of a distance between sort of the symptoms you feel and the stuff you're reading so that you can be a little bit more objective about it. What else? We also look at what we call epidemiology, which is the distribution of disease. So if you're a

40-year-old man, and it turns out that the condition is actually much more prevalent in 70-year-old women, then, you know, it's probably unlikely that you have that condition. So trying to understand not just the pattern of the symptoms, but also the kinds of people that are affected by it could stay healthy, not just treat disease, but are there tools, are there things online that you think are really good for that? Even more than what you find online, we're seeing an explosion of apps and wearables and other services that are helping people stay healthy. We're in the middle of a revolution, I think. We're just learning how these work and how they can help people in their health journeys. But certainly, I'll give you a

simple example. The World Health Organization and the American Heart Association all recommend increasing physical activity. And the problem is, when they make these recommendations, some of which are about 700 pages long, the guidelines are so complicated that most people don't have an easy way of understanding what that actually means in daily life. And you can download apps that actually just track your activity levels and translate these guidelines into, you know, other metrics that people can understand readily. And I think that's the sort of thing where by taking good science and turning into something that's super accessible and consumer friendly, we can actually help people stay healthier and prevent disease even before it starts.

Well, given that all that medical and health information is available online, it's really good to get some guidelines and some advice on how to use that information to improve your own health. Dr. Kapil Parak has been my guest. He is a cardiologist and author of the book, Searching for Health, The Smart Way to Find Information Online and Put It to Use. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, doctor. Thanks for coming on. Okay, fantastic. Really appreciate you having me. I think everybody has people on their holiday gift list who are hard to shop for. Often they're people that you want to get something nice, but you don't want to spend too much money

because you don't know them that well. But still, you know them well enough to give them a thoughtful gift. Well, here are a few gift ideas for those people that you might find useful. Pajamas. They can be an unexpected treat and you don't have to worry too much about size. If you're not sure, bigger is usually better. A car wash. Everybody needs to get their car washed, and a certificate or a gift card for an inside and outside car wash will be really appreciated. Movie tickets. Now that people are headed back into the movie theater, a gift card or some tickets to

a movie would be great. And some theaters offer vouchers or gift cards for popcorn, snacks and drinks as well. Those are a few good ideas and it's something you should know. Hey, we've been getting a lot of very nice five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts and if you haven't left one recently or

ever, go ahead. Go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review. Five stars would be appreciated. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown.

I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures?

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