The Lies We Tell Our Doctor

If your doctor knew your true alcohol intake, he or she might recommend other medications than those you’re taking. Also, if you were to land in the hospital, symptoms like a rapid heartbeat or shakiness could be understood as alcohol-related electrolyte disturbances or withdrawal symptoms and not something else, notes Richard Bryce, D.O., chief medical officer at the Community Health and Social Services Center and director of the family medicine residency program at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Fudging the truth about exercise 

A 2020 survey of 500 people by the life insurance company TermLife2Go found that 43 percent of those who lied to their doctors fibbed about their exercise habits (or lack thereof). 

“Most often patients overestimate the amount of exercise they do because they think they should tell the doctor what she wants to hear,” Goldberg says. “Being untruthful takes away an important opportunity to discuss some of the challenges that are keeping you from exercising.” 

It can also give your doctor a skewed perspective of your risks for cardiovascular disease or osteoporosis, because regular physical activity is important for preventing both conditions, Bryce says.

Skipping right over supplements

As you get older and take more medications, it only becomes more important to help your doctor prevent, and recognize, possible adverse interactions with all the meds in your pillbox — over-the-counter and herbal remedies included. For example, if you take omega-3 fatty acids or vitamin E supplements and a blood thinner or aspirin, you could have an increased risk for bleeding, Goldberg says. In other instances, an OTC drug or supplement could interfere with the effectiveness of a prescription drug.

Editing your health history

Whether you smoked so long ago it hardly seems real or you quit five years ago, don’t fudge this one on all the forms you’re asked to fill out. Doing so could cause your doctor to miss signs of a related respiratory problem; plus, he or she wouldn’t know to screen you for lung cancer or other lung diseases, Bryce says.

“If you don’t share your health history, we have to start from square one, and we may do extra tests, which might lead to an incidental finding, which creates more anxiety,” he adds.

Pretending you take all your medications as directed

“People don’t come out and admit they’re not taking their medicine,” Goldberg says. “Then, if we discover their cholesterol level hasn’t changed, there’s a risk of overprescribing medications.” Similarly, if your blood pressure or blood sugar levels are out of control and you don’t mention you’re not taking your medications as prescribed, your doctor may give you a higher dose of the drug or an additional drug to add to your pill protocol, which increases your risk of experiencing adverse effects, Goldberg says. Or he or she may send you for more aggressive screening than is necessary.

Bryce recalls a patient who, when asked if he was taking all his medications for high blood pressure, simply said yes. With further probing, it turned out the patient was rotating his pills so that he wasn’t taking them all on a daily basis, the way they were prescribed. In that scenario, “the health risks, especially for heart attack and stroke, go up, or the patient might be prescribed more medications needlessly,” Bryce says.

Failing to mention a face lift (or tummy tuck, or other cosmetic surgery)

It’s important to divulge any surgery you’ve had and how you responded to it, including whether you had complications — such as a blood pressure spike, an infection or a bad response to anesthesia, Goldberg says. The reason: Having a history of surgical complications may put you at higher risk for more. And sometimes complications can arise years later — such as painful adhesions from a tummy tuck — and the doctor may miss the diagnosis if he or she doesn’t know about the surgery, Grossberg says. (And yes, doctors say, lying about tummy tucks in particular is pretty common.)

Toward more candid communication with your doctor

These are just some of the reasons it’s important to build trust and open communication with your doctor— by telling the truth about what’s going on with you now as well as your health history and habits. And remember: Doctors have heard it all before, so they’re not going to be shocked by what you are or aren’t doing. “There would be no judgment — we would just look at it as more information that would help us help our patients,” Bryce says. “That’s what we’re here for.”

If you know what you should tell your doctor but can’t muster the courage to fess up verbally, write down the truth about what you’re doing or not doing and hand the paper to your doctor, or tell your doctor through the online patient portal, Bryce suggests. “These omissions are an everyday occurrence — usually it’s small white lies, but they build up over time.”

In the end, it may help to remind yourself that, as Goldberg says, “if you want to get good health care, the value of the visit is only as good as the information you give your doctor.”

Editor’s note: This story, originally published Feb. 19, 2021, has been updated with new information.   

Stacey Colino is an award-winning writer, specializing in health, psychology, and science. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Prevention, Newsweek, Parade, and many other national magazines.