Galen already said in the second century that the symptom follows the disease like the shadow of the body. That signal sent by the heart, lung or stomach indicates that something is not working well. We perceive a simple headache or swollen feet as temporary annoyances in most cases, although sometimes they can also be signs of serious diseases.
It is not about becoming hypochondriacs and collapsing the urgencies at the first change , but neither is it about remaining impassive and confident in the face of the body’s warnings.
“One of the problems that our health system has, so good and so envied in other countries, is the oversaturation that originates in hospital emergencies as a result of the number of patients who come with minor ailments that can be perfectly treated by the doctor family ”, says José Luis Llisterri, president of the Spanish Society of Primary Care Physicians (SEMERGEN).
However, the opposite is also the case: patients who do not turn to any professional, although the symptoms are more than obvious and require a specialized opinion.
A study by the UK Cancer Research Institute published in 2014 in the journal PLOS ONE pointed out that more than half of British people – 53% of the 2,000 interviewed – had suffered some of the symptoms that could indicate the presence of a cancer, but only 2% thought that they might have this disease, and more than a third ignored the alarms and did not seek expert opinion.
Given the results, Dr. Katriina Whitaker, lead author of the research, said: “We have to send the message that symptoms that do not disappear, particularly those that are considered warning signs, should not be ignored , and you have to go to the doctor to seek help ”.
Here are some of those signs that we should be more attentive to, because the early diagnosis of a disease can be synonymous with cure.
