Doctors Warn: Beware Of ‘Cyberchondria’

[MineralMan]

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/05/08/doctors-warn-beware-of-cyberchondria/

MINNNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — When something doesn’t feel right, many go online to search for information on what their symptoms might mean.

But some patients are over diagnosing themselves, and doctors are diagnosing this phenomenon as its own condition: “Cyberchondria.”

Cyberchondria is a growing trend in which a person spends hours online reading health websites, self-diagnosing, and stressing out.

According to Dr. Chris Balgobin of Fairview Clinics, one of the hardest parts of his job is to convince people that they don’t have what they think.

This is very interesting, and I've seen it happen in real life, too. It's so easy now to look up diseases and symptoms, but without a medical education, it's very difficult to evaluate what you've read.

[Warpy]

1. Dr Google can be a real quack

if you're not educated enough to know what you should be looking for and where.

They'd be much better served if they downloaded the Merck Manual to their Kindles.

Oh, they'd still get it wrong, but at least it would be actual medical descriptions instead of a bunch of hogwash from Mercola and related sites.

[MineralMan]

2. Yes. And the mistake many make is to believe that

everything on the Internet is accurate. Sadly, the purveyors of quackery of all types have good website designers, it seems.

[unblock]

3. omg! cyberchondria! that's totally me! i've got that! i'm sick! i must be! i read it online!

actually, mrs. unblock is self-aware enough so that, for the most part, she steers clear of medical stuff online or on tv because of this effect. if she really needs some medical info, she asks me and I do the googling and the appropriate filtering for her.

unfortunately this means we can't watch "house". he can actually *say* that episode's rare ailment is something only 3 people have had in the last decade and mrs. unblock is convinced she's one of them.

[kestrel91316]

4. Cat (and presumably dog) owners have been doing this for years.

They either come to me with a firm diagnosis that they have made based on some non-doctor's ravings on the internet and demand that I prescribe some wildly inappropriate medication, or they ignore a treatable problem too long because they have diagnosed a fatal condition where there was something treatable (but they let it go too far and than it's not treatable anymore).

I am so sick of this shit.

[LiberalLoner]

5. Then there is the other side of the fence - me and every other female MSer I've met....

Trying and trying to get help for years from doctors for all kinds of weird symptoms like having to void the bladder 20 times a night, blurry vision with eye pain that comes and goes, aching legs at night, overwhelming fatigue, etc. and being told its all in our heads, it's because we never had children, etc.

Funny how all the other female MSers I've met online have had the same experience as me...but none of the male MSers have. Maybe there is some bias there.

The average time to diagnosis is six years from the start of symptoms in MS. We need to do better than that because early treatment is crucial. In my case it took 12 years to get a diagnosis and along the way "functional somatic syndrome" was slapped on me because my bladder problems did not respond to the IC meds. The meds didn't work for me because I had MS, not IC.

We need and deserve better than that from the healthcare professionals.

Granted, I was using the Army system and I believe it inferior to the civilian system, but still....

PS I guess what I am saying is, some of us try to become our own doctors out of frustration in situations like mine....

[womanofthehills]

6. I'm a female and get most of my health info online

I can get answers from the internet that I can't get from doctors. Do a lot of searching and get different views. I always put in the word "forum" to see what has helped others.

Natural estrogen/progesterone cream just about eliminated nighttime bladder problems and I had to tell my dr what amts I wanted because she knew nothing about it.

I went on a road trip to California drinking Starbucks coffee along the way. The tip of my tongue was burning so bad the entire trip. I came home, went online and put in "burning tongue forum." And the big answer was "cinnamon." Stopped putting cinnamon in my coffee and no burning tongue.

I don't take prescription meds: I have a great diet and look for the natural cure. However, my mom was a different story. I was constantly researching drug reactions and making the drs lower or change her drugs. Here is where the internet is great. I tell the dr the pain med is making my mother psychotic (something she has never been before). The dr says "I have prescribed this to hundreds of people and have never seen this side effect." ME: Just go online - there are thousands of people, even young people, saying this med made them psychotic.

It's a great tool esp for researching meds -just go to the side effects forums and you will definitely look for the natural solutions.

[CanSocDem]

7. Good for you.

I am always impressed by those who have the courage and confidence to take responsibility for their own physical/medical reality. It takes "courage" to question the proclamations made by the institutions that control our lives and "confidence" to believe our own ability to counter 'institutional' failure.

The institutions, like the OP, would have us believe that our personal experience and analysis don't matter and that their own experience and belief is superior, even in the face of contradicting evidence.

"Natural estrogen/progesterone cream just about eliminated nighttime bladder problems and I had to tell my dr what amts I wanted because she knew nothing about it." and...

"I have prescribed this to hundreds of people and have never seen this side effect."

The so-called "cybochondria" is another made-up condition promoted by the institution to reassert their authority in the face of their failure to deliver public health.

The internet and discussion boards such as this one, exposes the failures of corporate interest that feeds private interests over the growth of the community. As Democrats, I trust that building a healthy functioning community is more important than directing material wealth to a few select individuals.

"It's a great tool esp for researching meds -just go to the side effects forums and you will definitely look for the natural solutions."

Indeed.


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