Googling You Health Symptoms Is Dangerous, Here's What You Should Do

If you have ever Googled to diagnose health, you will find a bunch of fatal diseases you may have got based on one symptom, such as you’re having a nosebleed and the internet says that you’re having cancer. You should know how to take good care of yourself if you have a migraine, a common cold, or other common conditions. Online information can help but only when you know exactly what condition you are having.

Why you shouldn’t google your symptoms

Googling your symptoms can either make you underestimate them and let the condition get worse or overestimate them and take the wrong medication. In other cases, you may get health anxiety in which you are excessively worried that you are sick. And even if you don’t develop health anxiety, online searching for medical symptoms can still make you worry a bit.

As noted in research, internet information can help you avoid having to see the doctor for minor conditions, but it can also make you anxious and scared of what you find online. There are tons of health information all over the web, but not all of them are accurate and trustworthy.

How to find accurate health information online

For lay media

• Look for articles with peer-reviewed clinical studies to support their claims.
• If you can (and you should), read the complete abstract or report of the supporting peer-reviewed clinical studies, and find the conclusion what verifies the study results.
• You can also trust articles written by top experts in the area or quoting them.
• In case the article is not written by an expert or does not include insights from experts, make sure it has been reviewed by reliable health professionals.
• You can also search for the health editorial policy of the publisher of the article you read. Many of them include policies on their sites, which is good as it means they have strict editorial guidelines for health content as well as citing primary sources and experts.

For primary sources

These are what you should look for and check for.

• Author affiliations and conflicts of interests: each time a scientist writes an article regarding science or takes part in a research study, they have to declare potential conflicts of interests as well as their affiliations so any bias would be disclosed.
• Commissioning and funding info: like the section above, you should look for information on funding and commissioning as it must be disclosed as bias. Several firms in the health area fund and commission health studies for proving their product’s efficacy. it’s worth noting that though this doesn’t mean the results are manipulated, company-funded research isn’t independent, so they are not totally reliable.
• Being cited in other studies: this is what you should check because there’s a lot of research and scientists usually source existing articles for their new research ones. And an article cited many times is a good one.
• The date of the article: the studies you read must not be older than 10 years, but the recommended number is five years old or less.