Patients Lying To Doctors

As the saying goes, “everybody lies.” People lie about anything and everything under the sun, and they are likely to lie to anyone and everyone under the sun. Some social scientists have found that deception – and self-deception – may be part of the core that allows people to maintain their social natures, but that doesn't mean that lying should be applied to everything. The fact is, people will lie for a wide range of reasons, and more often than not, people will attempt to lie to their doctors.

Lying to one's doctors about certain things isn't something new. Hippocrates, the man considered to be the father of modern medicine, was quite aware that his patients were likely to lie to him, and would often measure their pulse rates to check for truthfulness in the statements they made. Doctors in the modern world still have to deal with patients who lie, and many suspect that what patients lie about has not changed much over the ages. The modern medical practitioner can expect to be lied to about things like overindulging in alcoholic substances, eating questionable amounts of junk food, smoking, illegal drug use, unprotected sex, and other unhealthy habits.