May you continue to be so blessed with your health you’re able to continue believing this. Medicine is constantly learning new things about the human body, identifying ways things go wrong, developing better testing and treatment, etc. Doctors are humans, and the sheer number of diseases out there coupled with unusual or atypical presentations means sometimes even diagnosable issues are missed far too long because it wasn’t on the doctor’s radar. Gender and ethnicity can absolutely play into this as well. Heart attacks can look different in women than men. Skin disorders can look different depending on the melanin in your skin, and it doesn’t always occur to a doctor to factor that in when they’re evaluating a skin condition. Despite having disorders with diagnostic criteria, sometimes the testing for them is garbage like with narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia.

Personally? I spent over 15 years complaining to multiple doctors I couldn’t stay awake doing things like driving at night (because I’m not a careless idiot I avoided it to avoid hurting/killing myself or others), staying awake during movies, falling asleep in classes, struggling with insomnia at night, having weird episodes of feeling like a whacky wavy inflatable arm tube man, etc. It took 15 years for a therapist to go hold up this is not normal. Have you ever been evaluated for narcolepsy?? A sleep study and MSLT later and 15 years of why I can’t stay awake are explained. I literally had to find a sleep clinic that would do consultations and set up a study if deemed necessary because my primary at the time wouldn’t refer me anywhere despite having all of these symptoms and an epsworth score that put me in the severe sleepiness range. The evidence was right there and I was even given an appropriate screener that should have resulted in immediate referral to a sleep medicine specialist but got an eh I’m not too worried. Want to know the side effects of having fragmented sleep? Increased depression and anxiety symptoms, brain fog, increased sensitivity and less capacity to modulate pain, propensity for obesity, heart issues, blood pressure issues, and a whole host of other really problematic health issues. Sleep disorders are horrifically under diagnosed and can play a huge role in worsening and leading to other chronic health issues.

The testing for narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia though? It’s shit. Two different sleep medicine specialists can read the MSLT study and come out with a different perception of any REM episodes, and the same patient can take the test on two different days and have wildly different results. It’s only within the last 10-15 years that science has learned narcolepsy type 1 (that is the one with cataplexy where people lose muscle tone experiencing sudden strong emotions because their brain triggers a REM state) is likely an autoimmune disorder leading to an orexin deficiency. They’ve known about narcolepsy for decades and have studied it for a really long time, but very little was known (and even less is known about narcolepsy type 2 let alone idiopathic hypersomnia), mediocre treatments to control the symptoms have been available, and there is still not a great diagnostic tool to identify it. And these are with specialists. GPs are rarely even looking for it or sleep disorders in general unless someone is complaining of snoring at night and being exhausted.

Did you know a symptom of hypothyroidism can be foot pain? It has to do with how the thyroid hormone impacts tissues in the body, but that foot pain can present at sub clinical levels on standard testing. Foot pain is a pretty common problem, but doctors rarely think thyroid related to it without glaring other symptoms. Very low vitamin D levels, which in the era of wear sunscreen and stay out of the sun to prevent skin cancer, can cause hellacious nerve pain that presents more similarly to other disorders. It took over a year and multiple trips to the ER with trigeminal neuralgia like pain for a doctor to finally test my sister’s vitamin D levels. They were critically low. She loves being outside in the sun and we grew up in a very sunny state. There was no reason for doctors to think vitamin D with her tan. Someone finally said let’s just check it anyway.

So yeah. Presenting with health complaints a doctor can’t figure out doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong. And saying those patients are being overly dramatic hypochondriacs diminishes what people are going through and how they’re suffering.

There is a lot more to figure out. It's a shame that people in pain are dismissed like this. Causes them unnecessary extra pain.

Ah yes 25% of those visiting the doctor must be hypercondriacs

Every couple of years, previously unknown conditions are newly identified, understood, and treated. If everyone was like you, medicine would never advance. People who have sezuires would all be locked in asylums or sent for exorcisms.