NHS offers a range of advice and information for Highland patients
How do we know what to do and how do we know the truth? How do we know when people are telling us things without self-interest or when they are trying to sell us things or trying to get our votes?
Even a casual viewing of the television series The Traitors, which is hugely popular and is filmed locally, shows how hard it is to see whether people are telling the truth. We watch apparently hapless contestants unable to identify who should be trusted and who is trying to mislead them, but would we be any better in their position?
How do we know whether what we come across on the internet is true when there is so much potential for manipulation?
How can we choose a sensible balance between conflicting opinions when we are often fed information that is designed simply to reinforce what we already think, rather than to challenge it?
How can we cope with the rise of artificial intelligence?
These types of questions are important for our health. We need to decide when to seek help for a medical condition, whether to take medication and what we can do to improve our health.
Our natural instincts are not always helpful.
We are naturally drawn, for example, to foods that are high in salt and sugar. Such desires were doubtless helpful for our distant ancestors desperate for any nutritious food, but will be less helpful for us as we try to control our food intake.
People will tend to turn to different sources of health advice.
There is a long tradition of looking to relatives and friends, while younger people tend to use social media apps to search for answers.
These may be helpful sources of advice and information but may draw us down the wrong path.
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However, I have two suggestions for helping us get the best advice.
Firstly, in this country we have a great resource in the National Health Service.
The services and care delivered by the NHS are widely praised, but it is also an excellent source of information and advice.
NHS Inform is available on the internet and provides information which is designed to help improve our health and wellbeing without the drive to sell us anything.
Similarly, health professionals give advice and information which is designed to be the best for us, the patient.
My second suggestion is that we should all take some more time to understand our bodies and our health better and become more familiar with the services that are available even if we don’t need to use them yet.
This is especially important if we have a health condition.
More knowledge gives us a greater chance to be in control of an illness and not let it get the better of us.
There are good resources available for us to start this through the NHS, trusted national organisations and at libraries.
Getting this knowledge has been called health literacy and it can really help us to start separating what is true and what is not.
Dr Tim Allison is NHS Highland’s director for public health and policy.
