Doctor's scales were off!
Last edited Sun Jul 12, 2015, 12:15 PM - Edit history (1)
Went to a doctor on Monday and was shocked at the (high) weight reading, which was put in my file with no subtraction for clothes, shoes, etc. Started planning to cut calories slowly. I stepped on my own Health-o-Meter scale today and the weight was 9% lower. My clothes and normal variation might have accounted for 3 or 4 percentage points of those, but no way for all 9 points.
So I went online and found that it wasn't necessarily true, as I always had heard, that the doctor's scale is more precise. In fact, they can be infrequently calibrated (and not inspected independently) and with far more use than home scales may be wrong. The Health-o-Meter site said my scale would be accurate to + or - 1%. I then followed a suggestion to weigh something I bought with a known certain weight (I used bottled water) and my scale was exactly right.
I then thought back to an appointment with another doctor where my height was measured as 1.5 inches shorter than I once was. This was alarming because I am being treated for bone density loss. The following year, when my height was measured to nearly the full 1.5 inches higher, I asked the assistant about the discrepancy and she dismissed it with, "oh yeah, that was wrong--we have a new device."
Although these are not earth shattering problems, I think doctors need to be more vigilant about accuracy on these measures because advice and actions depend on them. To say nothing of bumming out patients needlessly!
Hope this helps someone else.
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