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."
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.
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 suffer from diabetes, hypochondria, narcisicm and schitzophrenia. I used to have breast cancer, ,but it got better.
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
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."
Especially since the posters Slashdotitus is still not in remission.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Perhaps an antihistamine or a corticosteroid? Do you have any idea what an allergy is? Immune response times n -- the resin from poison ivy causes an allergic reaction (it is not "toxic" to the body, just causes this reaction -- remember that certain people are immune to poison ivy). Calming the immune system down with antihistamines or corticosteroids, depending on the severity of pruritic dermatitis is quite advisable depending on the situation. If your child had taken the course prescribed by the physician, he would have been all right. You are the classic case of the cyberchondriac -- 8 years of schooling, plus n years of residency and another n years of practice experience differentiate you from the MD.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.