Your doctor recommends a thing, and you do it. That’s the simplest version of how the doctor-patient relationship might go, but it’s not always the best one. You may find out later that there were other options for treatment that you never knew about, or that the drug you took has risks that may outweigh its benefits. To get the full picture, ask these four questions.

The first time you have to make a doctor's appointment for yourself can make you wish for the days - perhaps not long ago - when Mum or Dad did all this for you. And if you're the parent in this scenario, it might be hard to step back. Here's a guide to help young adults take charge of their health care.

Would you rather have an erection when the time is right, or the reassurance that you won't have a panic attack in the middle of your work presentation? An orgasm, or the ability to get out of bed tomorrow morning?

I went through most of my life thinking I was allergic to penicillin. I'd had hives with a dose of the stuff as a child, and an also-allergic family member taught me to look for an allergy section on every medical form I filled out, and make sure to write "penicillin" on the line.

23andMe has reached a deal with pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline, giving the company access to their (your) genetic data to potentially develop new drugs. Did they just sell us all out? Not exactly.

The Poisons Information Centre is always there for you if you’ve swallowed, inhaled, or been exposed to something you shouldn’t. If your symptoms are serious, you should skip straight to 000 instead. But what if you aren’t sure whether you (or your child) have been exposed to a meaningful amount of poison? The centre has a web tool to help you decide if you need to call.

You can get away without having a regular general practitioner (GP) for a while if you’re young, healthy and a little bit stupid. But over time you’ll have enough health concerns that avoiding a GP will make your life more complicated. Here’s how to know when you hit that point.

Don’t bother inviting me to a dinner party, because I don’t have to snoop in your bathroom to tell you this: You have a mess in your medicine cabinet... or whatever you use for storage in there. Hundreds of plasters, but none where you need them? Expired medications? Yeah, I’ve been there too.

If you’re an... enthusiastic drinker, you might have wondered at what point social drinking crosses the line into problem drinking. But if you’re worried, you don’t need to be a falling-down, having-blackouts kind of drinker to seek advice and help.

Alcohol-use disorder (AUD) is a medical issue that falls on a spectrum — you can be on the severe end (falling-down drunk, blackouts, relationship problems) or the mild end (wish you could cut back but are having trouble).

Giving kids medicine can be torture for all parties involved. When my daughter was a toddler, the process would often escalate from bribes to pleas to threats to “ugh, fine, let’s just pin her down” as my husband and I would proceed to shoot a dose of syrup into her screaming mouth with a syringe.

The struggle is real — and universal. Thankfully, over the years, doctors and parents have come up with some clever hacks to make the medicine go down with less of a fight. Here are some ideas to try.

In a season four Black Mirror episode, one character (it isn’t a spoiler if I don’t say who, right?) attempts to end another’s pregnancy with emergency contraception in her breakfast smoothie. Folks, EC and abortion pills are two totally different things.

Storing medical information is tricky business. If you don't have faith in the government's My Health Record (a reasonable position to have), there are a variety of ways to store your secure data while letting others access it in case of emergencies.

The My Health Record opt-out period begins this week, and you have until October 15 to pull your records out of the scheme. But should you? Here are some compelling reasons to keep your records where they are.

We need smaller eyedroppers, stat. As ProPublica has reported, eyedrops are so large that they contain more liquid than can possibly fit into your eye. Fortunately, an adaptor may be on the way that won't waste half of your pricey glaucoma medication.

Post-flight blood clots can catch even seasoned travellers by surprise, as travel writer Lindsey Campbell recently found out. She stretches before flights and moves around as much as she can - but after landing, she dismissed her calf pain as probably an injury from hiking.

Coin cell or "button" batteries are small, shiny, and feel tingly on the tongue. If you're a toddler, that puts them into the category of "belongs in my mouth". But a swallowed button battery can begin burning a hole through a kid's oesophagus in hours, causing pain, severe injury, and sometimes complications leading to death.

Dear Lifehacker, In the past, I've assumed most doctors are charlatans, and only visited them in matter of dire emergency (needing a sick note for work, week-long flu, etc.). I am now reaching a point in my life where my body and mind are getting older and I am reconsidering past decisions.

While you technically can flush your old pills or throw them out, the The Pharmacy Guild of Australia strongly advises against it. That and there's enough nasty stuff going into sewage that it's best to keep medicine out of there if you can.

There are actually several types of bacteria that can cause necrotising fasciitis, which is the more accurate name for this condition. "Necrotising" means that the cells in your body's flesh are dying off; "fasciitis" means the result is inflammation of some connective tissues known as fascia.