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I remember last year when I was reading Nassim Talebs collection of books called The Incerto, which I highly recommend to everyone, his books have changed my life for the better in every single way. Anyway I digress, what I want to talk about is something called Iatrogenics (a term I learned from Nassim).

Iatrogenics essentially means harm done by the healer, it’s essentially intervening and making things worse.

For example, a few weeks ago I hurt my left knee and hip when I was leg pressing. I had hip and knee pain for several weeks and I simply resolved it by trying a different exercise and being patient enough to let it heal.

I actually benefited by essentially doing nothing and letting my body work it’s magic.

A similar thing happens with rib injuries, they generally don’t get operated on because they play a vital role in your breathing and if you don’t breathe, well, you die. So broken and bruised ribs are essentially just left to heal without any intervention.

Although I’ve just mentioned two scenarios where it pays to do nothing, unfortunately many people are harmed by interventionism.

For example Michael Jackson was so rich that he had his own doctor. And unfortunately the decision to have his own doctor cost Michael his life, because Michael was given a lethal anaesthetic one night to help him sleep which unfortunately killed the king of pop.

If Michael was never given these unnecessary drugs, there’s a good chance he would still be alive. And his doctor would never have been sentenced with manslaughter.

Iatrogenics is everywhere

Reading crappy books can cause you harm by sending you down the wrong path. Taking antibiotics when they’re not needed can make you more susceptible to future viruses.

Iatrogenics is everywhere so just remember when you take something or do something that purportedly provides benefits, ask yourself, what harm can it cause?

One of the reasons I love Catholicism is that it tells you what not to do and in many situations it’s more helpful to do nothing because not every intervention is a good one.

A quick note on when I had wrist surgery

If you’re a long time reader of mine, you’ll know I underwent two wrist surgeries within a year. It took me a long time to get these surgeries, and it was frustrating having to wait while I was in lots of pain, but in a sense I’m okay with it because the fact I tried everything else to resolve my wrist pain and nothing worked, not rest, physio or steroid injections. So by the time I had my surgeries I knew that there was no other options. Because no one really wants surgery if it can be helped, because it does carry risks, but in my case the rewards far outweighed the risks.