Slashdot Mirror
Cyberchondria
Makarand writes "According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle the ever-expanding
wealth of health information online is keeping hypochondriacs constantly worried. With websites devoted to every major and
esoteric illness and search engines coming up with many disease possibilities
when you type in a symptom, it is becoming very easy for the health-anxious
to believe that they have a disease. Many continue poring through the easily
available medical information even after their doctors have given them
a clean bill of health."
If I fail it!, then I'm cured!
found here
I think I totally have this Cyberchondria thing!
If you are concerned about something health related the best advice I can give is DON'T LOOK ON THE INTERNET and see a doctor. Doctors vists are a great way to get piece of mind, which IMO is well worth the cost/hassle.
Maybe this is due to the growth in the Pharmaceutical industry in the United States. With advertisements on TV for drugs to cure diseases people haven't even heard of, its logical that consumers will respond. The wealth of information that is available on the internet is mind boggling to most, and I was not surprised to hear about this.
But sometimes doctors are wrong and mis-diagnose problems. If someone believes that they have a problem well then they can research it before looking for a second opinion
I come to Slashdot for my legal and health advice.
I guess Cypher was right. Although I guess imagine the analogous alternate story:
"Because of the internet's recent collapse because of massive slashdotting, the whole world was left to wonder how they would ever find out how to get from their house to the nearest blockbuster without Mapquest or how to do a research project without Google."
Perhaps people who can't handle too much information should stay away from the internet before they freak themselves out. One hundred years ago, someone could have written how a Library had the same effect, bringing all that information in one place to freak people out who are easily freaked out.
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
You don't have to be a hypochondriac to experience it. It's also known as medical students' syndrome, where perfectly normal and reasonable medical students self-diagnose themselves with diseases and illnesses that they are studying about. It's also been known as psychology students' syndrome for obvious reasons.
It's easier to figure out you don't have a disease online than to be convinced you have one.
Methinks yes.
I see their point in the negitive side of online medical documentation but we must also see the benifit. Dr. Sam Gidding's papers on colesteral helped me lower mine with out having to spen hundreds of dollars on an RD. I see the negitives but I feel the positives greatly out weigh them.
Get paid to read spam
Hey, information can be used in many ways. Providing it makes it easier for regular people to really learn, and for paranoiacs to dive deeper into their (mis)perceptions of ill physical health.
/.) that either baffled a doctor or a series of doctors; perhaps some issues remain unresolved. But let's not shoot the messenger. Providing information about making bombs and providing information that drives hypochondriacs deeper into their sickness are the same thing.
On the other hand, with all we know, it's hard for any doctor to just say "you're fine!" and know that it's a fact. I'm sure many of us have had a problem (and please, let's not list them on
Most information is neutral--blame the users of that information.
This sort of thing is stumping doctors.
A patient walks in and immediately tells the doctor he thinks he has Berringer-Klopp syndrome. The doctor then excuses himself for a moment and has to dig up one of those rare diseases books. A few minutes later, he tells the man that he probably just has a case of warts.
That's the problem with Medical school students as well; people will immediately think of the rarest diseases. It's probably just a cold or a early flu, but people suspect that they have a case of Tularemia. It's the equivalent of hearing hoofbeats and thinking that its Zebras.
a very well known and common symptom. before internet those affected just looked through the medical references ...
I'll bet hypochondriacs do get ill more often than normal. When anyone gets sick, catches a disease or even thinks they have, they go and see their doctor or go to their hospital. That makes doctors waiting rooms and hospitals ideal exchange points for many many communicable diseases.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm not saying insurance is a bad thing, but insurance that says "yes, you can have open heart surgery for $5" is going to affect patient behavior, no way around it.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
I suffer from diabetes, hypochondria, narcisicm and schitzophrenia. I used to have breast cancer, ,but it got better.
Obviously, these health websites are doing nothing but aggravate hypochondriacs by adding stress to their lives. They should rally together, and file a class action lawsuit! It's the American Way!
Wait, that's a GREAT idea! I need to become a marketing guru for Pfizer...
oops, time for my soma...
"Many continue poring through the easily available medical information even after their doctors have given them a clean bill of health."
And they should, because doctors can't differenciate a Headache from Meningitis if they caught it contagiously and then they died from it. Seriously, a 2 minute talk with a doctor and i can get out of there with about any brand of pills i actually researched a little. For example.
"Hey doc, i'm having panic attacks, do you think i should get Rivotril? My friend's friend used to have those, and she said it works well."
"Sure, here have these, take X per X hours/days"
"Thanks doc"
2 minutes. Only 2. It's come more to social charisma contests than actual diagnostics. Not to mention about doctors who dont even try anymore. You have panic disorder? Try some Morphine.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
There is no way to help the fearful. Unabated fear of disease or malformation is sort of a narcisistic thing; makes them feel special and the constant complaining is how they gather more attention to themselves than they would normally justify.
I know, the hypochondriacs in the readership will say they have a special mental condition and need lifelong treatment, and there really is no cure. Well that just proves my point, doesn't it?
As for the impact of Google on all this; I recently suffered some kind of respiratory impact, and after two weeks of coughing woke up in the night feeling I could not breath. A call to the hospital assured me that I was in grave danger and I should call emergency aid. After thinking on this and listening to my body a while I decided to tough it out, and finally slept the rest of the night. Later the next day I had an exam and x-rays, which x-rays came back abnormal (metastatic cancer indication) which I didn't buy at all because I didn't fit the profile for metastatic cancer. I Googled some things and based on sound evidence decided I had a rare respiratory fungus. More x-rays and some consultations and the doctor said that OK I didn't have cancer, and he didn't know what I had, and it might be a rare respiratory fungus (!) and he would need to cut my chest open to see, which would land me in the hospital for 3 days (at a time when I am needing to find a job). I declined, of course.
Still have a cough of sorts, but getting better. I think the clue to health is to insist on being healthy despite the continued pressure to be otherwise. In this regard Google (and a clear head, and some experience working in a hospital X-ray lab) gave me the resources to stay on my feet at a time when I really needed to.
Like every other kind of tool, using the Internet takes skill and sometimes courage. And no I still don't have a job, so every day still counts.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Interesting that it comes up now, because after reading about Asperger Syndrome in this Slashdot-article a few days ago, I actually went to an AS-support group and asked whether I had it. Embarrassing, I know. Luckily the people on the forum turned out to be quite friendly and as it turns out my symptoms are more related to a mild case of social phobia.
If something is wrong with a person, the internet can serve as a useful tool during the initial information-finding phase. The unguided nature of the internet does carry the risk of misidentifying or imagining diseases or conditions. It should therefore never be used as a substitute for professional help!
that people should get licenses to surf the web.
my pet machine
Late, breaking news:
...really guys, this is less article-worthy and more "duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh" worthy. I've heard more insightful commentary from an empty bottle of Guinness.
OCD sufferers report rise in symptoms due to abundance of light switches and sinks with soap nearby!
In unrelated news, schizophrenic patient spends 4 hours yelling at convenience store security camera about CIA stealing his brain waves!
"Ah yes, the doctor isn't making a profit if he's not pushing sheepish patients out the door as quickly as possible, with no questions."
Years ago, my son was having a bad reaction to poison ivy. He was about 6 at the time. My wife took him to the doctor, and the doctor was puzzled about how bad the reaction was. He has very very white, delicate skin, and I knew he was just susceptable to stuff like that.
But the Doctor, oh no, he sent him to a skin doctor, who didn't want to deal with it, so he perscribed a drug I'd never heard of. My wife called and I told her I'd look it up on the internet.
Turns out, this stuff was so potent, that once you start taking it, it shuts down the body's ability to use and regulate certain key portions of his immuno system. You can't just stop taking it either, or it could cause serious reactions.
Holy shit! For a 6 year old! And no warning.
I told my wife to pour it down the drain. My son's poison ivy cleared up in 5 days. But that poison he was pushing. Cripes.
What a moron. It verged on malpractice. But what could you do? Doctors stick up for each other, and I would end up looking like the idiot over a stupid doctor perscribing stupid medicines.
Don't trust doctors blindly. Do programmer's make mistakes? Lots. I feel confident doctors have about the same mistake rate.
I think there's a wrong trend that sites that should not give this kind of information are the ones that are listed on top in a Google search. As usual on the internet, apply common sense first... but a lot of people read it, and if it's on a popular site... well, it must be true then of course. I did check with my uncle later on (he's a doctor) and he confirmed my research, diagnosis & cure. He also confirmed that the trend I noticed is a pain in the butt for most doctors, because a lot of people tend to think they have something dramatic (bragging rights on a tea party perhaps?) while they don't. He says consult times have a longer duration now because not only does he have to diagnose & write out a prescription if needed, but he also has to tell the patient his or her issue is not that grave.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
It just contains pictures and information about what your body would look like and act like if it was normal. This means it has gross pictures of things that people would get alarmed at if they didn't know it was normal.
Today's editorial: "That's not a wart."
Besides, you can't make a diagnosis without seeing the problem for the most part, unless it's painfully obvious (Nail in the hand? Well, obviously you have a nail in your hand!).
This sig no verb.
IMO, misinformation is much worse than information overload. I know a few people who go to alternative therapists pretty much exclusively and get told an amazing load of bullshit. Sure, doctors don't have all the answers and their judgement is often skewed by the pharmaceutical industry peddling new expensive drugs. But I'll take their advice over the alternative snake oil salesmen any day.
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
What concerns me about this article is that doctors' diagnoses are not always accurate or objective. Certain patient populations (ex. minorities, women, the poor) sometimes face preconceived notions (ex. that they are scrounging for unemployment benefits), or they try to take matters into their own hands because they do not have adequate access to the health care system. Emerging diseases, especially those that cause chronic symptoms that are not readily visible to others (ex. FMS, MS, ME, Gulf War illness) are commonly dismissed as psychosomatic until the body of medical research which shows otherwise becomes too large to ignore.
In my own experience, an orthopedic surgeon--the only one my HMO would agree to cover at the time--dismissed my osteoarthritis as lack of exercise, poor posture, and worrying. He agreed that my hip was malformed, but told me that I would not need to see him for at least another twenty years, and then only as a precaution. I took his advice seriously, gritted my teeth and toughed it out; and if I had pain, I tried to exercise more. Ten years later, I was almost completely unable to walk, and the "new" doctors found that my hip socket was almost completely gone. I needed a total hip replacement with arthroplasty because I didn't have enough bone left to hold the implant. By this time, I couldn't hold down a job, and I had become such a pain-stressed freak that my family and social life was in ruins. I learned my lesson, and never again will I rely on a doctor to be my only or primary source of information.
This isn't exactly a new problem. People have books full of diseases and stuff that can convince them they're about to die.
Loads of people in England have books like these which are ideal for the budding hypochondriac! A lot of them are full of flow charts that let you start out with a symptom and answer questions to find out what disease you've got. You can start out with a slight headache and be dying of diphtheria before you know it!
So basically, the problem isn't really limited to the internet, but maybe it's easier to surf the net than to crack open a book when you feel ill.
I'm not sure I agree with that either. I think most hypochondriacs would prefer a certified medical treatment (a pill, some chemotherapy, whatever) that would convince them that they are cured from whatever illness they imagine themselves suffering from rather than sympathy. I mean, surely part of the problem -- from the hypochondriac's point of view -- is that not only are they sick, really, really sick with some -- probably -- life-threatening disease, but their doctor(s) is/are refusing to acknowledge that 'fact' and no treatment will therefore be received?! Sympathy be damned: what a hypochondriac wants is some surgery and a whole lotta pills!
Finally, and parenthetically, I don't think the Internet has managed to add very much to the hypochondriacs' lament. Jerome K. Jerome published his Three Men In A Boat some 100 years ago: in it the narrator J. comes across a medical textbook and manages to persuade himself that he suffers from every ailment in the book (quite literarily) save housemaid's knee. Upon seeing his doctor he receives the following prescription:
Which only shows that it was perfectly possible to be struck by hypochondria even without the use of electronics. Now, if only every hypochondriac were to receive such sensible advice.
The liver is evil and must be punished.
When the doctor told me it was Mono, I threw both my hands in the air and said "ALRIGHT!"
The doctor said that was the first time he's ever seen someone so excited to have Mono.
I've found that doing a site search for site:.gov in Google is a good way of filtering out bullshit. The US government may be slow and inefficient, but they hold research that they publish to pretty tough standards. I was interested at one point in the benefits of having lights with similar spectral profiles to sunlight, as my room is windowless. A lot of vendors claim that it's tough to sync yourself to waking at particular times without *sunlight*, rather than just any kind of light. The current take the government has on it is that most of these claims are pretty much overblown.
The government doesn't have everything out there, but when it does have studies, it usually puts them out there on the Internet, publically available. It's your money that paid for said tough standards and hours of someone shifting away bullshit. I'd suggest taking advantage of some of that.
May we never see th
...actuallly, I don't know if I qualify as a hypochondriac... ;)
I don't see the doctor because I realize that half the time I feel like crap, it has nothing to do with doctor-worthy stuff, yet I worry about it anyway, and blow it up. Sometimes stress from work and school will put me out, and my brain works over time trying to categorize it. Maybe some things are uncatagorizable. Maybe some things aren't worth catagorizing. But I do it all the same, and come up with dubious explanations for this and that -- recurrent chestpains that could be caused by heart defects, or angina, or carrying my backback the wrong way, or who knows what. Why do my testicles ache? Is it because I have testicular cancer, or because when I'm studying, I sit with my legs tightly together, wedging my nuts into a sorry state? I don't know, but I wonder about it. And I've got these strangely shaped moles....
The reason I don't go to the doctor (I've only been twice in the past 5 years) is because I can't tell if my pain is a legitimate pain, or even if I am in pain at all. Probably I will die of something serious that I didn't go to the doctor for because I thought I was imagining things. But at least that is less embarrasing than having the doctor cradle my balls, thinking I am a head case.
Actually, I talked with a friend who is interested in this. It turns out that this is why many ads make no medical claims --- just show pictues of happy people and then mention the medicine's name. It turns out that if you make *any* medical claims in an ad, you also have to mention the side effects. However, if you simply reference the medicine's name, you don't.
May we never see th
I am tired of laws that try to protect idiots from themselves. We should let idiots be idiots. The problem is when we have to pay for their perpetual medical care when they F themselves up. We should stop doing that. If the doctor detects self-abuse, then kick them out and let them die the in street. Perhaps give them one warning. The second time they F up, boot them! If people want to take 100 viagra pills to impress their 18 year-old girl-friend, then it should be their problem. If their dick explodes, then let them live dickless.
Table-ized A.I.
For people that do have rare disorders left undiagnosed, however, the Internet is an incredible boon.
I discovered after 21 years of operations with organ difficulties of all kinds that my birth defects had a name, that there was a great support network online, and wonderful new treatments. Nobody had ever told me what it was, because doctors focused on one malfunctioning organ at a time. I only learned because I was bored one night and typed the name of a procedure into a search engine. I learned about a new operation in the discussion groups about two years later, went through 6 layers of doctors to convince my HMO to let me have it -- and now for the first time in my life, I can go away from my house overnight, I don't have to worry about medical mishaps, it's amazing! All because *I* looked up info on what I had, instead of relying on authority figures that (all the way until I reached a surgeon) had never even *heard* of what I needed.
Similarly, it was a couple of years ago that I was searching for information on my delayed development/maturity and for the first time in my life found out what it was I'd had all along. I was skeptical at first, but I did fit the exact profile and asked others that were diagnosed in the online support community, eventually finding that I was more like them than anybody I'd ever met in real life. I've since been formally diagnosed, as has my partner (who went through the same self-dx process) though we learned in the process that the amount of ignorance in the psychology field when it comes to our neuro-issue is absolutely horrifying. This is after we'd each spent quite a bit of time being grossly misdiagnosed and drugged senseless based on that -- it was due to *our* research that we were finally given a diagnosis that made sense and were able to obtain guidance that improved our lives instead of making things worse.
...if you have a cheap-ass HMO, you're going to have some Bitchin' pile of frequent-flier points from all the flights to India!
What the doctor was trying to do was treat your son's poison ivy by attacking the mechanism by which it is mediated.
You DID know that poison ivy is a hypersensitivity reaction, didn't you? Your own immune system causes the rash and symptoms. The rash of Poison Ivy is caused by a delayed, type IV hypersensitivity reaction (cell-mediated) to the oil of one of several species in the Toxicodendron genus. There is no way to treat poison ivy, except to temporarily suppress that particular immune response, often with steroids or other drugs. Then again, you could just wait... as you discovered. Poison ivy goes away if you give it enough time... but I can't tell you the number of people I see who demand that I do something about their symptoms right now.
If your son had a bad enough case that he was sent to a dermatologist, then your doctor may have been right on the money.
You have every right to do what you did... but don't accuse your doctor of malpractice; you're indicting him on an issue you clearly don't understand. You are exactly the type of person they are referring to in this article.
Then again, if we didn't have AC's talking smack, this wouldn't be slashdot.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I'm not sure what the article is implying. Are they saying that it would be better if people were medically ignorant so that they couldn't talk themselves into having horrible diseases?
Sorry, but I don't buy that. People with anxiety disorders always could go to the library or worry about something else.
But there is real and useful medical information on the Internet. If you worry about your risk of HIV after a sexual encounter, for example, you can find data quickly that lets you assess your risk rationally on the Internet, and that may well reduce more people's anxiety than increase it; in the past, you might have had to go to the library and go through stacks for many hours to find a simple answer, something most non-hypochondriacs would never have bothered with.
Furthermore, doctors themselves are so prone to making mistakes that having access to such a wealth of medical information on the Internet can actually save your life. I think doctors are quite unhappy that they are losing the information monopoly they traditionally enjoyed. Patients are now questioning their judgement, pointing out their mistakes, and generally are more informed. Perhaps that is the real reason why the medical community keeps raising this non-issue.
Hypochondriasis exists along a spectrum of psychiatric disorders, known as the Factictious disorders, where patients seek out care for imagined illnesses.
One of the keys is that they seek out care... with the extreme example being Munchausen's syndrome; patients who seek out the sick role so avidly that they fake illnesses, have unnecessary surgeries done, etc... they often harm themselves just to get medical care, and eagerly submit to any and all tests/interventions, including risky surgery.
Along that same continuum are the hypochondriacs... they often seek out care for imagined or fear illnesses, but it's different from a Munchausen's patient... hypochondriacs see doctors out of fear/anxiety rather than a desire to assume the sick role.
Besides their tendency to seek out medical care, they also have in common (all the somatoform disorders) the characteristic of being very resistant and difficult to treat. You can't confront them, you can't reassure them... they are utterly convinced they have a serious disease. Every doctor has a handful of these patients, particularly hypochondriacs (Munchausen's patients are much rarer), and they can be very frustrating to treat, primarily because they virtually never get better.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
They aren't giving you full service I agree... but read the parent poster's own words.
he perscribed a drug I'd never heard of. My wife called and I told her I'd look it up on the internet.
It sounds to me like the poster wasn't even present at the doctor's office, so he doesn't have any idea what was discussed or not discussed. Why do you think doctors document everything? I can't tell you how many patients forget everything I told them five minutes after they leave... printed discharge instructions are a Godsend for us, and they prevent people from coming back on us, claiming "he never told me that!" I've had patients do that many times, and when I get an irate phone call from the administrator/spouse/family/doctor, I read it right back to them straight out of their chart. I don't like doing that, but it's the only way I can protect myself.
What a moron. It verged on malpractice. But what could you do? Doctors stick up for each other, and I would end up looking like the idiot
He said it, I didn't. Then again, I don't know what else you call someone like that, who attacks his doctor without even a basic understanding of the disease process or its proper treatment...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
This is from a very funny book written in the 19th century. In those days the Net equivalent was the library and the function of the banner ad was admirably filled by leaflets for patent medicine...
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.
I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals," if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.
Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had scarlet fever.
I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.
I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. "What a doctor wants," I said, "is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.