Cyberchondria - I think I've caught it!

[NormCameron]

I have a confession to make: I'm pretty sure I have cancer (multiple kinds), heart palpitations, hypoglycemia, and skin tumors. I haven't talked to a real doctor about it, but Dr. Internet has helped me diagnose all of my symptoms over the last few years. (And if you think I'm trying to be funny in the first sentence, you should find out the truth from some of my friends.) This is a condition described as "cyberchondria," which Microsoft has spent time researching while trying to improve its search engine results for Live Search.

Neurotic self-diagnosis is nothing new; it was put to great comic effect in the opening pages of Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), for instance, in which the narrator concludes he has every disease from gout to zymosis (but not "housemaid's knee") after reading medical textbooks at the British Library.

But thinking you're about to die isn't all fun and games. Microsoft's work on cyberchondria shows how easy Internet access to medical information can really affect people. The company has just published a report on its large-scale, longitudinal, log-based study of how people search for medical information based on a 40 million page anonymized sample, combined with a survey of over 500 Microsoft employees about their own health-search experiences.

The results are much as you might expect. People like to use the Internet to better understand their symptoms, but they often find themselves digging deep into WebMD or Wikipedia before discovering—to their horror—that the tiny rash they thought they had is actually a rare skin disease that could (and likely will) kill them tomorrow.

In its report, Microsoft states the obvious—"Our results show that Web search engines have the potential to escalate medical concerns"—but notes that cyberchondria can cause post-session anxiety that can (and does) interrupt users' lives long after finishing their medical research.

It's true. I do have hypoglycemia.

Microsoft researchers Ryen White and Eric Horvitz showed several examples of different symptoms that would turn up search results for both minor and major conditions. If someone were to search for "headache," for example, there's an equal chance of finding information on caffeine withdrawal and brain tumors; the researchers note that headaches are exceedingly common, but the incidence rate of a brain tumor is around 1 in 10,000 in the US.

The same findings apply to "chest pain," which could turn out nearly equal results for indigestion and heart attacks. Here, however, the researchers are very careful to note that—although the likelihood of an otherwise healthy person having a heart attack is very low—heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US and chest pain could be an indicator of a "coronary event." And this, folks, is why people give the benefit of the doubt to Internet searches. It's always possible that you are having a heart attack.

Other parts of the report note that, once users find information on their symptoms, a third of them escalate their searches to dig deeper into serious conditions. And, when interviewing Microsoft employees about their own health-related searches, over half the group reported being disrupted in their everyday lives after learning about some remote possibility of illness from the Internet. Clearly, this is an issue that is not only causing individual stress, but could also be causing a slowdown in productivity.

At the same time, more than three-quarters of those surveyed said that the information they found online did not put them over the threshold of calling a real doctor.



Confirmed: even if dying, people are lazy.



Microsoft: "Cyberchondria" disrupting people's lives

 

[johngalt]

I've got one too - it's the burning, itching, infuriating desire to edit people's posts to make them grammatically correct and much more readable....

But I, too, will avoid the doc on this one.

 

[Joan Archer]

I've got one too - it's the burning, itching, infuriating desire to edit people's posts to make them grammatically correct and much more readable....

But I, too, will avoid the doc on this one.

Me too but mine is to do with spelling

 

[garysgold]

LOL. According to the net doctors, I've been dead for 3 years now. This post is just an illusion.

Gary

 

[jay817]

I am bad for wanting to put my reply though word if i am not sure on some of the post (another use for word - every little to make the money i paid for office go further) when writing i usually it is not right and should be I.
jamie

 

[echrada]

Oh, my achin' Google! Could it be cyberchondria?

You're convinced you have that rare ailment because you looked it up online. Let go of the mouse. What you really suffer from is cyberchondria.

Bone cancer, the woman told her doctor.

She just knew she had it because she'd read the symptoms on the Internet.

It wasn't, of course. It was a bruised knee that needed six weeks to heal.

Her doctor, orthopedic surgeon Paul Meli, like countless South Florida physicians, routinely calms patients who equate surfing the Web with graduating medical school.

"For me, this is a daily occurrence," he says. "They bring in pages of stuff from the Internet. They fill notebooks."

This surge in self-diagnosis is so familiar to doctors that it has a name: cyberchondria. People devour mountains of medical information off the Web and, as a result, some think they're much sicker than they are.

Dr. Richard Luceri, a cardiologist who now is vice president of medical services for Deerfield Beach-based JM Family Enterprises, says he saw it all the time.

"They'd walk into my office with things underlined and highlighted," he says. "They'd point to Page 2 and say, 'I must have leukemia,' when the only thing wrong was that they were tired and their boss was driving them nuts."

Smart, tech-savvy people can be the worst offenders, doctors say. In fact, in the early years of medical school, students often think they have the diseases they're studying, says Dr. John Wright, a Wilton Manors pediatrician.

"And these are bright, intelligent people," he says.


Oh, my achin' Google! Could it be cyberchondria? -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

 

[sassofalco]

I've got one too - it's the burning, itching, infuriating desire to edit people's posts to make them grammatically correct and much more readable....

But I, too, will avoid the doc on this one.

Me too but mine is to do with spelling

Dang!!! Then I must have Double-Cyberchondria , because I get really hot over both of the issues above......Does anybody know of a treatment, or indeed, is there a cure?

But for the moment, I shall continue to monitor my daily start-up status and re-boot response times. After a period of sleep, first, open eyes. If sight is etablished and maintained, draw in a deep breath and then exhale. Repeat a couple of times to confirm that breathing is established, and automatic.

Next step, check for cardiac response by taking pulse at right wrist. Repeat for same at left wrist. If a pulse is detected in both tests, then that is a fairly good indication that the re-boot is progressing well.

If all options above are verified as a 'successful system re-boot in progress', re-confirm this with a firm pinch on either the left or right upper arm. This 'system check' need only to be done once. If pain is felt, this establishes that the system re-boot has been successful, and that you are alive!! Congratulations! Now get out of the scratcher, you lazy bstard!! :sa:

 

[NormCameron]

And so might you laugh!




"Cyberchondria can be a terrible, devastating disease in the sense that the individual focuses on nothing other than checking their symptoms on the Internet and it destroys their lives," he said.
​

As a warning, take Lee Gardon, a "recovering cyberchondriac" who spent up to four hours a day looking up symptoms, at one point convincing himself that he had multiple sclerosis:

His cyberchondria got so bad, he would obsess in the middle of the night and get out of bed and check more of his symptoms. The man who once had passions for running and wind surfing had transformed into someone who would map out hospital locations and the quickest ways to get there in case of an emergency.
​

"[It was] very, very painful, because he was unreachable," said Gardon's wife, Laura Reyes. "He was really unreachable."

​

Microsoft's impotant research

​

might lead to a HealthVault

that not only stores your medical information but diagnoses you as well​

 

[Everlong]

I've got one too - it's the burning, itching, infuriating desire to edit people's posts to make them grammatically correct and much more readable....

But I, too, will avoid the doc on this one.

I suffer from that. Especially over at the Star Wars: Galaxies forums.