A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? Information at your fingertips. Any kind of information. Including health information.

A lot of people are using the internet for health information. That's a good thing. If you get the right information. You have to be careful. There are nuts in the world and there are nuts on the internet.

Anybody who works in health care will tell you that people are having symptoms and they are looking them up on the internet. Now, you take any kind of symptom and it could be a sign of something horrible. But chances are it is not. Chances are it is benign. But symptoms scare us. They set off an alarm. Uh-oh. That shouldn't be happening. Pretty soon the mind is spinning. So you wander over to the good ol' computer and type in YOUR symptom. Thousands of sites come up. So you go to a few. No doubt there will be a list of what COULD be wrong with you. From the smallest of problems to the biggest of problems.

Well, naturally there are those of us who are going to focus on that 1% chance of it being something big. They are going to run down to the emergency room in a panic assuming the worst. Probably at some point in the visit they will mention that they went on the internet and were worried about such and such. Such was the case with a young woman and her family who came in a couple of months ago and thought that she had multiple scherosis. She didn't have it of course. But the whole family was worked up. Mom called to be sure that I knew they were all worried about MS.

Nothing wrong with accessing information. Its a good thing. Three pieces of advice I would give you about looking up your symptoms on the internet:

1) Access a reputable source. If someone is selling something, making a profit off of their advice or their site, go somewhere else.
2) Don't panic. Chances are your symptom is nothing. Don't assume it is something horrible. If you are worried about it, go to the doctor and let an expert help you with it.
3) The American College of Emergency Physicians suggests you immediately go to the ER for the symptoms listed HERE. Don't bother with the internet if you have any of these.