[stephen_g]

Yep, while it can be frustrating to be in the small percentage of people who are able to evaluate the validity of research, it's totally understandable why doctors are dismissive given how much rubbish is flowing around that people come up with.

Often it just requires a bit of pushing if it's a simple diagnostic test. "Can we just do this blood test to completely rule out [x]?". I remember about a decade ago my father was getting this extremely bad dermatitis on his elbows for years, and mum had researched and found coeliac (celiac) disease could cause that as a symptom. The GP was prescribing steroid creams, and they really had to push him to do a blood test to check for those antibodies. He thought it was dumb but gave in just to shut them up! Came back positive, next step was an endoscopy, which showed massive inflammation in the small intestine. Dad cut gluten out of his diet and over the next year the dermatitis and intestinal inflammation disappeared.