What am I supposed to believe?
When More Information Creates Less Certainty
There is an assumption that more information should make us feel more secure.
Sometimes it does.
But there seems to be a point at which additional information begins having the opposite effect.
A person experiencing pain or an unfamiliar symptom is already dealing with uncertainty. They naturally want an explanation. So they begin searching.
One explanation leads to another. Then another.
Soon they discover that respected professionals disagree. Research papers appear to contradict one another. Someone online describes exactly the same symptoms but attributes them to something entirely different.
The search that began as an attempt to feel safer can actually create more uncertainty.
And uncertainty matters.
The nervous system is constantly attempting to determine whether we are safe. When the messages surrounding our health become confusing or threatening, the brain doesn’t necessarily interpret an abundance of information as reassuring.
It may interpret it as:
Nobody seems to agree. Maybe nobody really knows. Maybe something has been missed.
So we search again.
More searching produces more possibilities. More possibilities create more uncertainty. And uncertainty creates the desire for still more information.
At some point, this stops being purely an information problem.
It becomes a nervous-system problem.
The Explanation of the Moment
Healthcare also has a tendency to fall in love with explanations.
Over the course of my career, I have watched certain concepts become extraordinarily influential for a period of time. Posture, core stability, inflammation, fascia, biomechanics, the microbiome, trauma, central sensitization, the vagus nerve, hormones, and nervous-system regulation have all occupied prominent places in conversations about health.
Many of these ideas have substantially improved our understanding of the human body.
The problem isn’t necessarily the concept.
The problem occurs when a useful lens becomes the lens through which nearly everything is interpreted.
Human beings are enormously complicated biological systems. Pain, fatigue, weakness, dizziness, digestive problems, sleep disruption, and many other symptoms rarely exist within a single isolated system.
A concept can explain part of what someone is experiencing beautifully and still fail to explain the whole person.
There is an understandable temptation in healthcare to find the unifying explanation—the thing underneath everything.
Sometimes there is one.
Often there isn’t.
Artificial Intelligence Changes the Equation
Artificial intelligence has added another extraordinary resource to this landscape.
Used thoughtfully, AI can help people understand medical terminology, prepare questions for an appointment, organize complicated information, explore research, and better understand what a healthcare professional has explained to them.
Those are remarkable capabilities.
But unlimited access to information also means unlimited access to possibilities.
For someone who responds to uncertainty by searching for more information, AI can inadvertently make the cycle almost endless.
The important question may therefore be changing.
Instead of simply asking, “How can I get more information?” we may sometimes need to ask:
“Do I need more information right now, or do I need help making sense of the information I already have?”
Those are very different needs.
Clarity Is Not the Same as Certainty
Perhaps this is one of the most important roles healthcare professionals can play today.
We cannot always provide certainty.
Medicine rarely works that way.
Bodies change. Symptoms overlap. Imaging findings don’t always correlate neatly with symptoms. Treatments that work beautifully for one person may do very little for another. Sometimes our initial hypothesis turns out to be wrong.
But lack of certainty does not mean we cannot provide clarity.
Clarity sounds more like this:
Here is what we know.
Here is what seems most likely.
Here are the things that don’t fit.
Here is what I am less concerned about.
Here is what I think we should address first.
And here is what would cause us to reconsider.
That is very different from simply giving someone another opinion.
It gives the person somewhere to stand.
When Professionals Disagree
This can become especially important when my interpretation differs from something a patient has already been told.
I have learned to be careful in those moments.
Dismissing another healthcare professional’s opinion rarely helps the person sitting in front of me. It can actually make the situation worse. Now, instead of two different interpretations, the patient has two professionals implicitly asking them to decide whom they trust.
Whenever possible, I would rather say:
“I can understand why they might have reached that conclusion. Let me explain what I am seeing and why I am approaching it somewhat differently.”
That doesn’t require pretending that every explanation is equally convincing.
It simply leaves room for humility.
I can disagree without needing to discredit someone else.
And perhaps more importantly, I can help the patient understand why I disagree.
Knowing What Deserves Our Attention
For generations, one of the major problems in healthcare was lack of access to information.
Today we face a very different problem.
We have almost unlimited access to it.
The challenge now is determining what deserves our attention.
Expertise is not simply possessing more facts. Increasingly, I believe expertise also means helping people understand which facts matter right now, which possibilities deserve less weight, what we can reasonably set aside, and when we have enough information to move forward.
Patient education should leave people more capable, not more fragile.
It should increase understanding without increasing fear.
It should create curiosity without creating hypervigilance.
And when possible, it should quiet the room rather than add another voice to it.
There will always be uncertainty when it comes to our health. No amount of searching will completely eliminate it.
Perhaps the goal, then, isn’t certainty.
Perhaps the goal is enough clarity to take the next reasonable step—and enough confidence in ourselves to know that if the information changes, we can change direction with it.
Phil Rolfe, DPT
Owner, BodyLogic Physical Therapy – Weaverville, NC
Special interests include pain neuroscience education, orthopedic rehabilitation, dry needling, balance and fall prevention, and helping active adults remain independent through evidence-informed physical therapy.