It’s become a habit for many people when they feel sick or have an ache or pain to immediately grab their phone and start googling their symptoms. We’ve all done it – you have a headache or feel a lump somewhere and before you know it you’re convinced you have a brain tumor! While it’s understandable to want to find out what may be causing your symptoms, googling can actually do more harm than good in many cases. Here are some important reasons why you should avoid googling your symptoms.
You will likely misdiagnose yourself
When you start googling vague symptoms like fatigue, headache, or stomach pain, you’ll inevitably be presented with a laundry list of possible conditions. Without medical training, you may latch onto the most serious or rare diagnosis that matches your symptoms, causing unnecessary anxiety and stress. Studies have shown that when people google their symptoms, they are very likely to misdiagnose themselves, often believing they have a serious illness when the symptoms are actually being caused by something far less severe.
For example, if you google headache, among more benign causes, you may become convinced you have an aneurysm, brain tumor, or other life-threatening condition. In reality, the vast majority of headaches are due to dehydration, stress, eyestrain, or other non-life-threatening issues. Non-experts who google symptoms struggle to determine which conditions actually match their specific situation and often automatically assume the worst.
You will experience more anxiety
The search results from googling symptoms can be downright scary and are guaranteed to heighten your anxiety. Even if you don’t think you have a serious condition, being presented with lists of all the possible conditions matching your symptoms will naturally make you worry more. Studies have found clear links between googling symptoms and increased health anxiety.
Simply reading vague information without a doctor to analyze your specific symptoms and provide reassurance is a recipe for anxiety. Many people report feeling significantly more anxious after symptom googling, losing sleep or struggling to stop obsessing. Healthcare professionals caution that feeding your anxiety online tends to create a vicious cycle that leads to more googling and more worry.
You may delay necessary medical care
When people decide they know what’s causing their symptoms based on internet searches alone, it can lead to delaying or even avoiding professional medical care. If you’ve already decided you have a serious diagnosis, you may resist making a doctor’s appointment to confirm. Alternatively, if you’re convinced it’s just a minor issue, you may not seek care when you actually need it. Neither scenario is ideal when it comes to getting proper treatment.
Doctors strongly advise that you should always consult a medical professional for diagnosis and care rather than relying on google. Even if you feel sure you know what’s wrong already, a doctor can provide appropriate exams, testing, and treatment guidance. Don’t take chances with your health by avoiding or delaying doctor visits after amateur self-diagnosis online.
You will get inaccurate or incomplete information
It’s no secret that health information online can be unreliable or misleading. When you google symptoms, you’ll get search results from informational sites of varying credibility, blogs, advertisements, forums, and more questionable sources. Even reputable medical sites may provide general information that doesn’t apply well to your personal situation.
Without a doctor’s expertise, you likely can’t discern accurate, high-quality health advice from incomplete or misleading information. Depending solely on googled symptom results means you may base your health decisions on inaccurate facts and guidance. At best this limits how helpful the information may be, at worst it could lead you down an incorrect diagnostic or treatment path.
Doctors have access to more diagnostic tools
Unlike using google, doctors have far more resources at their disposal to accurately diagnose what is causing your symptoms. They can perform physical exams tailored to your specific complaint, order lab tests or imaging scans, or refer you to specialist doctors for further evaluation if needed.
With training and experience diagnosing a wide range of conditions, doctors also know which questions to ask and what clues to look for. Google search results can’t begin to match this level of personalized, expert detective work. Don’t shortchange yourself by believing a google search can replace a real medical evaluation.
Doctors can provide context and reassurance
Beyond diagnostic ability, doctors are also trained to communicate with patients in a calming, reassuring manner. They can explain conditions and put risks in perspective to alleviate worry. Doctors can also interpret how severe your symptoms are, whether they warrant intervention or watchful waiting, which treatments are recommended, and what your prognosis may be.
Online health sites often lack nuanced analysis of how diagnoses apply to different individuals based on their medical history, risk factors, or symptom severity. Without personalized context and interpretation, it’s natural for anxiety and fear to fill the information void. A doctor’s guidance can help provide that missing context.
Google can’t physically examine you
No matter how skilled google’s search algorithms get, it will never be able to physically examine your body for signs of illness. Doctors have an immense advantage in being able to feel for lumps and masses, check your vitals, look in your ears/throat/eyes, listen to your breathing, and all the other hands-on diagnostic techniques that can’t be replicated online.
Certain dangerous conditions like skin cancers are often diagnosed in part based on visual examination of lesions. Other conditions may require palpation of the organs or body areas to detect abnormalities. You simply miss out on a wealth of diagnosis-assisting information when you rely on google rather than an in-person exam.
You may get trapped in rabbit holes of rare conditions
The internet has a way of drawing people into rabbit holes of increasingly unlikely scenarios. You may search for headache and proceed to get caught up in concern about exotic and extremely rare types of headaches. Or search for chest pain and become convinced you have some obscure 1 in 100,000 condition.
Doctors have perspective based on the relative frequencies of different conditions and can zero in on the most likely diagnoses. Online searches often send people down rabbit holes of worrying about peculiar and highly unlikely illnesses that are actually not very probable matches for their symptoms in reality.
Google lacks combination diagnostic ability
When evaluating your symptoms, doctors have the clinical experience to know how different signs and symptoms may be connected and what conditions explain the combination best. Google often looks at each symptom in isolation without pattern recognition abilities to know what cluster of symptoms fits together.
For instance, googling chest pain will give different results than googling chest pain plus shortness of breath and fatigue. Doctors derive diagnoses from the totality of symptoms rather than a single complaint. Google’s more limited, siloed search capabilities cannot duplicate this skill of viewing symptoms as an integrated whole.
Doctors can assess how quickly you need treatment
Based on evaluating the severity of your symptoms and how rapidly they are progressing, doctors are trained to determine appropriate urgency for follow-up. They can advise if you need same day or emergency care versus scheduling a non-urgent visit for further evaluation. Without medical knowledge and in-person evaluation, it’s very difficult to judge solely from online searches how quickly you may need treatment.
Relying on google might mean you wrongly assume a concerning symptom isn’t an emergency. Alternately you may rush to the ER for non-urgent complaints that could be appropriately handled in an office or virtual visit. Doctors have the experience to guide whether your symptoms require urgent attention or less aggressive follow up.
Doctors know your personal health history
Your specific medical history provides doctors key context that google lacks. Preexisting conditions, medications, past procedures, family history and more all inform the diagnostic process. Doctors who have treated you long term have invaluable perspective on your baseline health to know when symptoms are abnormal for you.
Without knowing your health intricately, searching generic symptom info online has limited relevance. Don’t ignore the importance of your doctor’s depth of knowledge on how you specifically experience illness and what diagnoses are most probable.
Doctors can order diagnostic tests
While googling provides only theoretical conjecture about what might explain your symptoms, doctors can actively investigate causes through diagnostic testing. From blood work to ultrasounds and biopsies, doctors have many tools at their disposal to get concrete answers rather than guessing. They know which tests are indicated for your symptoms and can explain the results.
Turning to google rather than obtaining real diagnostic test data when you don’t feel well means you are still left wondering what’s truly going on in your body. Testing allows doctors to definitively diagnose or rule out conditions. No search engine can provide that peace of mind.
Doctors can provide appropriate treatment
Perhaps most importantly, doctors can provide or prescribe treatments to help resolve your symptoms, while google cannot. Depending on your diagnosis, doctors may recommend over-the-counter or prescription medications, physical therapy, surgery, dietary changes or other interventions tailored to your situation.
Online health sites can offer ideas on managing different illnesses, but only doctors can decide on and authorize specific treatment plans after fully evaluating you. Don’t miss out on lifesaving medicines or other needed care by trying to treat yourself based on a google search rather than seeing a doctor.
When googling can be helpful
While there are clearly risks to googling symptoms, it’s not universally bad. Here are some appropriate ways it can be helpful:
- Look up general education on medical conditions you’ve already been diagnosed with, keeping in mind quality of sources
- Get background information on tests or procedures your doctor orders
- Learn about medications your doctor prescribes
- Research quality of life tips like diet, exercise, stress relief for your diagnosed health issues
- Find doctor or hospital quality ratings when choosing medical providers
The key distinction is looking up information on known diagnoses rather than guessing at mysterious undiagnosed symptoms. Use google as a supplement to doctor’s orders, not a replacement for them.
When to see your doctor about symptoms
Not every symptom requires an immediate in-person doctor visit, but many do warrant professional evaluation. See your doctor promptly if you experience:
- Severe, sudden or persistent pain
- Bleeding or bruising for no known reason
- Lumps, skin changes or new moles
- Fever over 101 F
- Sudden or severe numbness/weakness
- Dizziness or disorientation
- Unexplained weight loss
- Changes in bowel/bladder function
- Difficulty breathing
- Chest pain or pressure
For milder symptoms, discuss your concerns at your next physical exam. Don’t hesitate to see your doctor if symptoms are impacting your daily function or quality of life.
When to go to the ER
Head to the emergency room or call 911 immediately if you experience:
- Chest pain, especially with shortness of breath, sweating
- Sudden numbness on one side, slurred speech, vision changes
- Severe head injury or trauma
- Heavy bleeding that won’t stop
- Severe difficulty breathing
- Neck or back pain after trauma that prevents movement
- Large open wounds
- Seizures
- Extreme disorientation, unresponsiveness
- Sudden severe pain, like worst headache of your life
Don’t chance symptoms that could signal stroke, heart attack or other critical conditions. Let doctors evaluate you immediately when experiencing potentially emergency symptoms.
Tips for avoiding “cyberchondria”
“Cyberchondria” refers to the phenomenon of experiencing escalated health anxiety triggered by doing online symptom searches. To avoid falling down this unhealthy rabbit hole:
- Avoid googling at first onset of symptoms – wait and see if they resolve first
- Never search symptoms in the middle of the night when feeling more anxious
- Limit symptom checking to reputable regulated health sites, not random forums
- Avoid sites trying to sell unproven health products
- Don’t click on ad results as they are often misleading
- Stop reading if feeling increased anxiety, don’t feed the habit
- Read offline books or magazines to distract yourself
- Talk to trusted friends/family if you need reassurance
- Make a doctor’s appointment to discuss symptoms that persist
Being wise about when, where and how long you search online can help control the urge to endlessly google.
Conclusion
While it’s common to want to quickly search your symptoms online, giving in to this impulse can often do more harm than good. Misdiagnoses, health anxiety, delays in treatment, and misinformation are just some of the potential risks. Instead of playing doctor through google, get properly evaluated by a real physician who can examine you thoroughly, run tests, and provide appropriate care. Use online symptom checkers wisely and avoid letting “cyberchondria” take hold. Your health is too important to leave solely in the hands of a search engine.