Checking health symptoms online: best websites and what to avoid
- Searching the internet for your health symptoms can help, according to these doctors, but you must look for reputable sources
- Beware claims backed by anecdotes rather than scientific studies
When Ea Holm feels unwell or experiences unusual health symptoms, she sometimes consults the internet. As a resident of Lamma Island in Hong Kong, seeing a doctor means having to travel some distance, so she avoids it if she can. Another reason she searches for her symptoms online is that she does not always trust doctors to diagnose her correctly.
“In my experience, doctors don’t spend nearly enough time listening to me and examining my symptoms, and they often misdiagnose,” she says. “After looking up my symptoms online and coming up with a diagnosis I’ll go to the doctor to get it confirmed. But without my suggestion of a diagnosis I’ve found that the doctors tend to jump to conclusions, maybe because they’re under a lot of pressure.”
Holm suffers from an uncomfortable autoimmune condition called lichen sclerosus, which affects the skin. To prove her point, she says that she was incorrectly diagnosed for the disease three times by three doctors before she decided to check her symptoms on Google.
When she went back to one of the doctors and told him what it might be, he agreed with her. In fact, he was rather excited because lichen sclerosus is rare and he had only ever come across it once before. Without her suggestion, Holm says she wonders how much time would have passed before she had got the right diagnosis and treatment.
We are often advised against searching for our medical symptoms online. Doctors tell us that it can cause confusion or make us unnecessarily pessimistic or worried about our condition.
