Honestly, it's a crapshoot. Most of the time, laymen are just engaging in wishful thinking, confirmation bias, and personal attachment to their opinions.
But I've seen more than a fair share of doctors who are unreasonably attached to their own ego and out-of-date knowledge it's built on, and of patients who are more invested in genuine research into their condition than even Dr House would be.
The timeframe between science finding new insights(or proving prior ones wrong) and the knowledge becoming mainstream among the medical community is measured in decades.
A motivated individual can - sometimes - do much, much better, medical degree or its lack irregardless.
See my other replies here - I am a skeptic like you, but I genuinely have zero trusts in professional. Anecdotal, but most surgeons in the US propose disk fusion for back pain that can be otherwise corrected. I know multiple people who got told they will never do sports again, should fuse their spinal disks, only for another doctor to tell them to rest a few weeks or do some stretches and now they are lifting and playing soccer.
And that's where I stopped reading