My dermatologist says to drop the DEs......

[Eudjinn]

You are saying by this is that everything doctors do is a guess at best and that is why I say away. I have to be damn near dying to go to one. Way to many stories around of wrong diagnosis for me to put my trust in them.

I mainly meant that medicine is not as clear cut as people often think of it to be. You would be surprised at how much one disease looks like the next. I can list a page long differential diagnosis for anything. The point is that it is not easy. Wrong diagnoses happen. Doctors are humans and are prone to the same mistakes any other humans are prone to. The reason they train so long is to minimize the amount of mistakes because the stakes are so high. You'd be surprised at how many diagnoses are made correctly on a daily basis and how many live are saved in the process. I'm willing to bet that number is significantly higher than the amount of misdiagnoses and lives lost due to negligence or poorly informed doctors. Doctors work in teams often, also to increase brain power and to minimize mistakes.

Modern medicine is a thing of marvel and people often don't get that. With all the heart disease and diabetes that is rampant in this country, people are still living well into their 70s, 80s and 90s because we have practically miraculous drugs that increase survival tremendously (I am willing to bet a lot of the older gents on this forum are on a beta blocker (metoprolol), a statin (lipitor or crestor) and an ACE-inhibitor or ARB (enalapril or losartan). These interventions are so so underappreciated and under estimated. I have had many relatives die of heart disease in their 50s in Russia (lack of these drugs).

 

[mastinomaven]

Well this is my point. I work in commercial pathology, and the work we get from Dermatologists is pretty much skin samples for cancer testing. Other stuff they do is treatment of severe, acute acne ather acute and chronic skin conditions.

Any of which could make any form of shaving difficult. None of the posters here appear to fall into that category, so I can't see why Dermatologists as so popular and frequented in the US. If you don't fall into the above categories, why are they giving opinions on shaving methods?

Well you see, Americans are a vain bunch, and dermatologists don't just treat skin diseases here. Their practices are really just part of a comprehensive beauty salon where laser hair removal, hair restoration, botox injection, cellulite removal, eyelid rejuvenation, macrodermabrasion, chemical peels, body sculpturing, and all manner of other cosmetic procedures are offered in addition to treating skin disease. My dermatologist has all these services (plus about ten more) listed on her tiny business card. Her practice has five rooms dedicated to some form of laser skin enhancement procedure. When you add vanity to profitability, this is the result!

 

[goby]

I mainly meant that medicine is not as clear cut as people often think of it to be. You would be surprised at how much one disease looks like the next. I can list a page long differential diagnosis for anything. The point is that it is not easy. Wrong diagnoses happen. Doctors are humans and are prone to the same mistakes any other humans are prone to. The reason they train so long is to minimize the amount of mistakes because the stakes are so high. You'd be surprised at how many diagnoses are made correctly on a daily basis and how many live are saved in the process. I'm willing to bet that number is significantly higher than the amount of misdiagnoses and lives lost due to negligence or poorly informed doctors. Doctors work in teams often, also to increase brain power and to minimize mistakes.

Modern medicine is a thing of marvel and people often don't get that. With all the heart disease and diabetes that is rampant in this country, people are still living well into their 70s, 80s and 90s because we have practically miraculous drugs that increase survival tremendously (I am willing to bet a lot of the older gents on this forum are on a beta blocker (metoprolol), a statin (lipitor or crestor) and an ACE-inhibitor or ARB (enalapril or losartan). These interventions are so so underappreciated and under estimated. I have had many relatives die of heart disease in their 50s in Russia (lack of these drugs).

Or they died in the 50's due to their crappy diet and too much vodka?

That is not meant to be anti-Russian. My people are Jewish from Lithuania, and they died in their 50's too because of crappy Jewish food (corned beef, pastrami, etc.)

That's why I'm a vegetarian.

With that said, my dad still eats his crappy diet, and is 72. He is the oldest member of my family, and we all give the credit to his medicine, 3 angioplasty surgeries, 2 carotid artery surgeries, and one heart bypass surgery. They really are amazing... but we could save a lot of heartache by changing our diet.

 

[mdevine]

The one thing I've noticed about doctors is that their in business to make money. The more times they can get you into their office the more money they make. They also get paid by the drug companies just for writing a prescription. So of course their going to do anything to keep that money rolling in. Even if they don't know what the hell their talking about. Remember that a doctor doesn't make money when you're well, healthy, and don't have any questions to ask him.

What you've described here is a perfect example of a doctor who doesn't know what he's talking about. Most of them just push pills, and keep you coming back for more follow up visits.

Its kind of funny, but many doctors will give you a prescription and say "here, try this for a week or so, and let me know how its working". If its not working so well, and after another office visit, he'll say "O.K. stop that one, and try this one, let me know if its any better".

All this at a cost of very big money, either by insurance, or out of pocket. That's why they call it a "practice".

Where to start with some of the misinformed statements in this post. Of course doctors are in it "to make money". Unless you are one of the extremely rare hermetic monks who works all day long solely for the benefit of your fellow man, or you are one of the not so few living on the dole off of society's (and my) money, then you do whatever it is you do for a living "for the money". I am neither embarrassed or ashamed that I am compensated for my time. I work very hard and am available and am often called at all hours of the day and night. Also, it is against federal law to be compensated for writing a prescription. Drug reps can lose their jobs for giving a doctor as much as a sticky note. As another astute poster commented, the only way to practice much of medicine is by making an educated guess as to what you are treating and then deciding the appropriate course of treatment. The key word in that sentence being "educated". I am amused that anyone who would complain about health care costs wouldn't understand that making a well reasoned diagnosis and treating it is much less expensive than doing thousands of dollars of labs, x-rays and expensive tests on every patient so that one is never "guessing". Believe me, I am busy enough that I don't have to resort to making up treatment and having patients return for unnecessary visits just to run up the bill. I have a hard enough time getting to spend quality time with my kids as it is. Sorry for going on so long but I took the above post to be an assault on my and all other physicians characters.

 

[Eudjinn]

Or they died in the 50's due to their crappy diet and too much vodka?

That is not meant to be anti-Russian. My people are Jewish from Lithuania, and they died in their 50's too because of crappy Jewish food (corned beef, pastrami, etc.)

That's why I'm a vegetarian.

With that said, my dad still eats his crappy diet, and is 72. He is the oldest member of my family, and we all give the credit to his medicine, 3 angioplasty surgeries, 2 carotid artery surgeries, and one heart bypass surgery. They really are amazing... but we could save a lot of heartache by changing our diet.

I can agree with you 100% that diet modification is of utmost importance. I always plan on counseling patients on this subject. However, you cannot change your genetics and diabetes is just one of many diseases that are very strongly influenced by family history. Lifestyle modifications first. But thank goodness we have the drugs and interventions (as you mentioned) that we do; and that we have plenty of dedicated and educated physicians that know how to use them.

Thanks for the support, mdevine. I would also like to add that I'm sure cost of care becomes an even bigger issue down the road, but even at the medical school level they teach us to diagnose with our brains, not with labs and expensive tests (the cost of which transfer over to you, the patient). Confirmation then is often based on response to therapy. Making educated guesses based on years of education and experience is exactly what can keep health care costs down.

 

[Drubbing]

I have been a practicing physician for over 20 years and have never been approached with any offer remotely resembling this. I don't know of anyone who has either. I think this is an urban legend as no industry is more tightly regulated than the pharmaceutical industry.

Having worked in the pharma industry for 10 years, it is an industry that flouts as much legislation as it can get away with. While it does much good, its bottom line is greed, and is a very easy target for its shortcomings. The salaries of its CEOs would make Investment bank CEOs feel like minnows.

The wholesale blinkeredness of Australian spe......ts in attempting to disprove the link between lucrative HRT therapy and breast cancer, based on fudged studies they were involved in (and claim to have been duped) is a disgrace of epic proportions.

In Aus, in addition to being govt regualted, they also self regulate in areas such as marketing ethics; an oxymoron for much of the industry.

 

[dslazar9]

As a doc and passionate wet shaver I'd say he's more likely uninformed than on the take. Ask him for a resource where you can read more about the difference. You can even use a medical buzz word that should get his attention-
"Evidence Based Medicine." Ask him for the data he used to give you this advice. I highly doubt he'll have any.

 

[hathela]

Well, . I'd make the case that perhaps your dermatologist wants you to shave with those products to help keep him/her in business.

Just sayin..

hahahahahaha

you have a point, brother

 

[Stan Grossman]

I haven't read the whole thread but judging from the headline your dr. is a hack.

 

[drifwood]

Edit: whatever your hunch, we don't allow namecalling among our members. Thanks for your understanding.

 

[Tekka]

He only did so out of ignorance. Up until I saw mantic59's video on wet shaving I didn't know much if anything about it or why it's better for the skin. I had to learn the old ways of doing things and then I had to see for myself that it was a better shave. Physicians aren't much different. They need to learn about something and much of the time then need to see for themselves if something is better or not.

 

[Uncle Erik]

What do you say we PIF some goodies to your doc?

As for medical freebies and promos, my father was a pharmacist for nearly 40 years. Man, did he get a lot of freebies, wined and dined by drug reps, and so on.

Though you're all free to take a shot at my profession, too - I chose law school.

 

[MrMoJoe]

Personally (whether the OP is a troll or not), I'd continue shaving with my DE unless I could determine for myself it was causing a problem. The whole DE/Wet Shaving experience is so enjoyable it would have to really get bad for me to go back to multi-blades and canned goo.

 

[ddaley212]

I think I need a new dermatologist.....

+1 tell your dermatologist that there an idiot

 

[Drubbing]

You are saying by this is that everything doctors do is a guess at best and that is why I say away. I have to be damn near dying to go to one. Way to many stories around of wrong diagnosis for me to put my trust in them.

I've worked, alongside, sold to, and provided ancillary services to the medical profession for most of my life. You can't generalise on the competency of doctors, some are poor and some are very good, just like any profession. And of course you've heard the negative stories, bad news travels faster and further than good, plus it sells newspapers and tabloid TV ratings. When did anyone ever talk up a positive outcome/diagnosis?

It's called practice for a reason, but a very small minority barely keep up beyond their med degree. It's lifelong learning and keeping skills up to date. That said, it's also a discipline of investigation and deduction.

I also think TV doctoring skews people's perception of what medicine and doctors are capable of. Medicine is not cut and dried, where a diagnossi can lead to treatment and cure. Often it leads to treatment and adjustment of treatment according to response, which can be highly individual. "House" for example features a disease of the week, where his magical intuition and detective skills eventually find a complete cure, wth the right infusion.

Working in pathology, I can tell you doctors are hopeless at the deduction - that why there are spe......t resources for them to call upon. They order way too many tests, particularly if they don't know what they're looking for, sometimes because of poor or badly communicated history from patients - just any 'abnormal result in a potentially difficult diagnosis will give them a clue where to go next.

We help educate them, so they don't obfuscate results by overordering.

Not because they're dumb or lazy, but because sometimes any one of half a dozen diagnoses could be the case. This makes doctors highly sue-able (particularly in the US, where litigation appears to be written into the constitution), because it's really easy to look back on the right diagnosis with hindsight. The process of elimination to get there can be difficult and misleading.

To stay away from doctors based on perceived lack of competence is only burying your head in the sand, should you fell something is not right with you. Many cancers, for example, aren't symptomatic til it's far too late to do anything about it.

 

[planto]

PAAH....what do dermatolagists know about skin anyways???????

 

[Rocketeer]

All ...

Check out this site:

http://www.dermatologycare.ca/shaving.php

On the page "The basics of shaving for men ..." (http://www.dermatologycare.ca/1/may-27.php) is the following statement:

"...Using a razor with multiple blades not only cuts down on the number of strokes needed, but it also reduces the potential for irritation to occur ..."

There is ZERO scientific evidence cited for this statement. It is simply a statement thrown out there using false logic that we are supposed to accept as fact.

So whether or not the OP is a "troll" as some here have claimed, I do not doubt that this anti-DE opinion is held by at least some, if not a majority, of mis-informed dermatologists.

___________________

 

[Jaybh1974]

Hi everyone, first post here.

I started wet shaving approximately 8 weeks ago. I have a little bit of adult acne (only flare ups, not steady), so I go to a dermatologist. My dermatologist about 2 months ago, recommended that I try wet shaving. He said that he has been wet shaving for years, and from what he has seen, using a sharp DE blade or straight razor can easily help my acne/ingrown hairs. He even told me what websites are the best ones to order things, new or used. He even mentioned this website. So, I have been wetshaving since the end of March, and my flare ups have almost disappeared completely. There is a great chance that my flare ups were actually ingrown hairs. The Dr. said I had ingrown hairs, but also some minor acne as well.
So the moral of my story, is , thanks to my Doc, I am addicted to wetshaving

 

[BroJohn]

My own take is that the doctors who recommend the multi-blade cartridges and goo just don't have any knowledge or understanding of traditional wet shaving. They are as subject to the multi-blade marketing and 'conventional wisdom' as the rest of the shaving public.

'The best a man can get...' and all that, you know.

I am surprised at those who seem dismissive and borderline contemptuous of the medical professions in general, it seems some here need a 'reset'. I appreciate the sacrifices physicians make and the hardships they endure so that they can serve society.

-- John Gehman

 

[kingfisher]

It seems that the position of the webpage linked is that multiple passes is more damaging to the skin than multiple blades.

The question about whether it is rougher on the skin to endure multiple passes or multiple blades is one I have brought up on this forum several times before. Obviously there is no scientific answer to the question. I think people here believe that one pass with a two-blade cartridge=two passes with one blade, and one pass with a 3-blade cartridge=three passes with a single blade, and so on, but I do not believe this is true. The wetshaving faithful don't have any more scientific evidence to support that statement than the dermatologists have to support theirs.

My personal feeling is that the more blades are probably more irritating, but not in a proportional way. For example one pass with a 3-blade cartridge likely doesn't irritate the skin as much as three passes with a single blade. And I'm fairly sure that one pass with a 5-blade cartridge is not the equivalent of five passes with a single blade (at least for most people).

Unless a person is very skilled and uses good technique, I actually think that a two-blade cartridge is probably slightly LESS irritating than a single-blade razor, for the simple reason that the force applied to the face is divided in half between the two blades. Again, I have no scientific evidence of this.


As for the original post, I wonder whether the entire thing isn't just a troll looking for jollies. We had this discussion a few months ago on the forum. The reason I'm suspicious of the OP is that I find it doubtful the doctor had Fusion stuff all over his office.

That is all.