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Doctors Seeing a Rise In "Google-itis"
It's one of the fastest-growing health issues that doctors now face: "Google-itis." Everyone from concerned mothers to businessmen on their lunch break are typing in symptoms and coming up with rare diseases or just plain wrong information. Many doctors are bringing computers into examination rooms now so they can search along with patients to alleviate their fears. "I'm not looking for a relationship where the patient accepts my word as the gospel truth," says Dr. James Valek. "I just feel the Internet brings so much misinformation to the (exam) room that we have to fight through all that before we can get to the problem at hand."
There's an app for that!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I think every website that lists all these varied diseases should put a rarity score next to each illness. That way when you think you've got Wilson's disease, you can look and see with a simple number how unlikely it is.
As made up words go, google-itis is particularly stupid, since it literally means "inflammation or irritation of the google."
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
...which disease you have.
You mean I don't have Ebala?
No, sir, you googled a typo.
I'm sure I have it! Typos are one of the symptoms!
for those scientifically oriented, and aware of our natural cognitive bias, it is a fantastic tool to pin down the real problem, bringing relevant information to discuss with a doctor.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Google obviously isn't the best place to get medical information, these people are twits. If you watch all the past seasons of House you'll figure out what's wrong with you. (hint: it's not lupus.)
I'll start. My wife had intense abdominal pains which her GP diagnosed as an intestinal blockage, and prescribed liquids, laxatives, and rest.
When she didn't get better, she "Googled" her symptoms, and found that the birth control Yaz had been linked to gallbladder issues, which fit the symptoms. She told her GP -- who had never heard of these side effects -- and had her liver enzymes checked. Sure enough, they were below average. My wife was scheduled for a ($20k) liver function test, and simultaneously taken off Yaz. The symptoms subsequently disappeared, enzyme levels returned to normal, and she opted not to get the test.
Now this may well be a coincidence, as I myself have pointed out, but if it wasn't, it's a clear case where Google-itis saved us 20 grand, since she never would have had the idea to stop taking Yaz if she hadn't found similar cases online.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
A stinging sensation in the lower spine. It's Terellian Death Syndrome, isn't it?
We agreed you'd come to me before checking the medical database.
Well, this time I'm glad I did. Maybe we can stop the cellular decay before it's too late.
Reg, you don't have Terellian Death Syndrome.
- You're sure?
- I'm sure.
Then maybe it is Symbalene Blood Burn.
No. I don't see anything wrong at all. Wait a minute. There is a slight imbalance in your K-3 cell count.
My K-3s? No!
Barclay, I'm sure it's nothing.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
That is has been a problem of sorts since the bombardment of TV and print ads for Rx drugs. Why do they feel they need to advertise them? You can't just go and buy them OTC.
"There might be intelligent beings created by God in outer space even if there are none here on Earth." -Anonymous
True story - I woke up one morning and my eyes were both full of floating debris and this circular ring. Also there were lots of flashes in my eye. None of this is a good sign so I googled the symptoms and it said I likely had a detached retina and I should go to hospital immediately. I did, and yes, both retinas had significant rips and needed multiple laser treatments, a couple of vitrectomies and a membranectomy before I was given the all clear. The morning I presented the doctor told me that it was very good that I had come in so quickly because it could quickly have deteriorated to a stage where it wouldn't have been repairable.
Of course, my symptoms were pretty obvious and I had an idea what it was before I even started looking but the first hit said 'go to hospital. Now'. Very good advice. I wonder how often the opposite is true and people use Google and find that it suggests it is nothing to worry about and they don't go to the doctor? My guess is that is rather rare compared with the hypochondriacs who have nothing wrong with them.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
A buddy of mine had severe sinus congestion. His doctor told him to take Afrin. Over the course of several years, his sinus congestion became worse. His doctor performed all sorts of exotic therapies, and continued to recommend Afrin. Thanks to Google, and Wikipedia, he discovered that long term use of Afrin can cause a dependency, and actually make the symptoms worse. A second opinion by another doctor confirmed his internet diagnosis, and he is doing much better.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Family doctors are pretty much useless. Why do I need to book for an appointment, wait like 30-40mins at the clinic even though I have an appointment, and only able to talk to the doctor for 5mins?
I went to do my annual check-up with the family doctor a year ago, and I complained to him about my day-time sleepiness. The doctor simply dismissed it as "bored at work". I basically had to google the symptom myself afterward to discover that I might have sleep-apnea, and then book another appointment to tell the family doctor to just give me a referral to see a sleep specialist to do more comprehensive test. Lord and behold, my self-diagnose was confirmed by the sleep lab, and I even knew that the treatment would be CPAP before the sleep doctor suggested it.
The point of the story is, yes, there will be paranoid people who suspect they are dying of rare diseases because of their headache and whine to their doctor all day. For most people, they are better off googling their own symptom first, get a general understanding of what could be the cause of it, so that you can better talk to your family doctor on what test to do and which specialist to see.
Hey, you don't go to see a car salesman before doing your homework, why go see your doctor without getting a better idea of your own health?
Wikipedia lists sources that have referred to it as cyberchondria.
As much as I tend to encourage people to do a bit of science on the side, I have to make a couple of remarks on this, being a biochemist myself. First - your conclusion is wrong. You at best showed that penicillin stays active when stored in dry powdered form. Drawing conclusions to any arbitrary substance is a bit far-fetched. That is a very important thing that you have to learn when doing science properly - how to assess what conclusions you can actually draw from your data.
Second - what where the concentrations you used? If you applied the penicillin at significant "overkill" concentration, you would basically see the statistical average amount of resistant cultures left in both cases. To be sure, you gotta do the experiment at different concentrations, and you gotta duplicate the plates for the experiment and the control, so you can compare the patterns of kill-off.
Third, even if you showed that the potency stays roughly the same, you did not show if there are degradation products which could possibly be harmful for a patient - you would need to do a toxicity assay to be sure that it stays harmless for the patient.
Forth, regarding the remaining colonies - did they survive because of innate resistance or because the antibiotic concentration was too low?
Generally I think your conclusion is probably right, but the data you showed are not sufficient to make that conclusion. What you did is great for a college-level experiment, but in reality, there are more factors that you have to check for. That's why I sunk a couple of years of my life into studying that stuff. As I said, this is not to discourage you - doing science at home is great fun and you can learn a lot, but you gotta be careful evaluating your data. The most important part about science is, at least to me, that you gotta be aware that a single experiment might answer one question, but raises 10 others, on which you gotta follow up.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Ok, I don't have any hard data, but it seems to me that in reality today for every patient with mis-informed "Googleitis" there are ten or more people who are getting better medical care because they are informed about their condition or even have already correctly self-diagnosed. Some of the comments right here to point.
But doctors are upset because they are not used to having informed patients. They are used being the godlike arbitors of secret knowledge whose judgement will be trusted 100% because of their degree. But in reality of course they are human and all too fallible, and even more so nowadays that they are increasingly simply pharmaceutical salesmen rather than healers and don't really have or take the time to actually know their patients.
Before doctors found it easy to be confident... because hardly anyone ever questioned them. Now things are getting a bit more difficult. Poor doctors? I'm finding it difficult to be sympathetic.
There may be a lot of information of questionable quality on the Net, but overall I have not a shred of doubt that the empowerment the Net has brought to the individual in this regard has been a boon to public health.