The Internet has made a vast array of medical information available to anyone who can use a search engine. While it can be helpful in many situations to have constant online access to medical information, sometimes people take the practice of self-diagnosis way too far. When people become obsessed with researching potential medical implications for even the most minor aches and pains, they cross the line from being informed about healthcare issues to becoming cyberchondriacs. If you spend a significant amount of time surfing the web so that you can diagnose medical conditions for yourself and the other people in your life, there is a good chance that you are a cyberchondriac.

The term cyberchondriac is used to describe individuals who obsessively seek out health-related information online. Their behavior goes beyond just researching health issues; they are actively seeking out illnesses that they, or their loved ones, might have. The enormous volume of medical information that is so easily accessible online today is dangerous fuel for a person who tends to have hypochondriac tendencies. When a person’s tendency to perceive false illness combines with access to the endless sources for researching symptoms and their implications that is available on the web, a cyberchondriac is born.

Cyberchondriacs frequently develop mistaken, but strongly held, beliefs that they suffer from many of the illnesses they read about on the Internet. A cyberchondriac may use a search engine to locate a series of symptoms, and then decide that he or she has every disease that shows up. A major problem with this is the fact that Internet content is unregulated. Many sites containing so-called medical information may not be reliable resources. Even though many websites contain useful health-related information, they are often not written or even monitored by medical professionals. It is not uncommon for a health website to be authored by people who have little or no medical knowledge.

Many physicians report a rise in cyberchondria among their patients. More and more patients are taking printouts from websites along with them to medical appointments, so they can tell their doctors what is wrong them. These patients frequently demand specific tests that may truly be unwarranted. For example, a patient who has ringing in his or her ears may demand an MRI be performed to search for a brain tumor, when medical protocol would call for the physician to rule out possible other causes for the symptom before ordering such a costly, and likely unnecessary, test.

While some of the information patients find online may be valid, much of it is from websites that are less than trustworthy sources of medical information. Many physicians are concerned that increasing numbers of people are self-diagnosing based on the assumption that the information they get online is sufficient. This can be a dangerous misconception. The fact that many medications are available through Internet sources makes self-diagnosis even more dangerous. Consumers who attempt to diagnose themselves may find it fairly easy to obtain medications that could do more harm than good in the likely event that their self diagnosis is incorrect.

While using the Internet as a research tool can be very beneficial, it is important for consumers to remember that only medical professionals can accurately diagnose and treat medical conditions. When dealing with serious medical situations, conventional wisdom has always told us to get a second opinion. Doctors are human, and can make mistakes. But trying to diagnose yourself is even more risky. Internet research may be beneficial as a supplement to a medical opinion or two, but it is certainly no substitute.

By Mary White