Can you have too much of a good thing?

Medical care is a good thing, but my guest today, Susanne O'Sullivan, says that our medical

system is over testing, over-diagnosing, and over-treating patients.

That's the case she makes in her newest book, The Age of Diagnosis. How our

obsession with medical labels is making us sicker. Suzanne is a neurologist who focuses on the

treatment of epilepsy, and she's written four books about her experiences as a physician.

Many of my patients are in their 20s or 30s. I see people with long lists of medical labels at that age,

and it shocks me because I didn't see it 30 years ago.

And I can't believe that we've got sicker, you know, to that degree.

Something is going wrong, and I appreciate that some of the subjects in this book

will be difficult for people, but I also think that something needs to be said about these issues.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

Suzanne not only thinks that the medical system is working on overdrive, she believes that

many patients are misdiagnosed. Her first book tackles the complexities of psychosomatic

disorders. As a neurologist, she commonly sees patients who experience paralysis, headaches,

dizziness, and seizures. However, she estimates that for 20% of her patients,

the cause of their sometimes debilitating symptoms is not neurological,

it's psychosomatic.

We start our conversation with Matthew,

one of the patients she describes in her first book,

It's All In Your Head, True Stories of Imaginary Illness.

So Matthew had noticed, I think he had a combination of back pain and tingling in his legs in the first instance.

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