You feel a twinge in your stomach and there is no obvious explanation. Or maybe, for no apparent reason, you get a stabbing headache. To whom - or to what - do you turn first? According to various studies, there is a good chance it is the internet.
"About 65 per cent of respondents now state that they have recently searched for health content on the internet," said Marie-Luise Dierks, co-director of the Hanover Patients' University, an independent education institution at Hanover Medical School in Germany. Some, though by no means all of them, try to diagnose themselves.
Independently researching a health-related matter on the internet can indeed be useful, said Dierks, who said it is a good way to boost one's self-reliance and confidence in dealing with illnesses, doctors and medicine. But she added a caveat: "It's important, however, that information from the web always be called into question."
Health care professionals are divided on the internet as a source of medical information.
"There is nothing wrong with informing oneself," said Ursula Marschall, medical director of Barmer GEK, a German public health insurance company.
But she said it is dangerous to regard the internet as more credible than one's doctor. Noting that "patients always have their own notions about their illness," she said those who did internet research were at risk of latching onto information that supports their preconceptions, even if those are completely wrong.
Maria Gropalis, a psychologist at Mainz University's Department of Psychology, also sees risks. "The danger of misinformation is very high on the internet. The overabundance of information can be a problem as well" - particularly for hypochondriacs, she said. "There's the risk that the internet will intensify existing fears."
A word has even been coined for unfounded anxiety concerning the state of one's health brought on by visiting medical websites: "cyberchondria." While Gropalis views the neologism as mainly a vogue word, she said the phenomenon it described was definitely a modern variety of hypochondria.
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