TORONTO – A dangerous trend of turning to Dr. Google when you’re feeling under the weather is gaining in popularity in Canada, a physician says.
It’s a bad habit that many of us in the digital era have picked up – we look for Facebook profile pages and Twitter accounts, we check Wikipedia for historical facts and, well, we take the advice we find on Dr. Google when we’re sick.
Women, in particular, are almost twice as likely to check online, and one-in-four ended up misdiagnosing themselves in the United Kingdom, according to a new study conducted across the pond.
The Daily Mail reports that these women even end up buying medication to cure their illness without even checking with pharmacists.
But Dr. Mike Evans, a staff physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, says Canadian patients turning to online sources to diagnose themselves is just as common here.
“For sure, it’s picked up and the Dr. Google effect is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s an incredible help in terms of pointing out diseases, especially if you have chronic or rare conditions, but on the other hand, people are self-diagnosing themselves more and more and often incorrectly,” Evans told Global News.
Evans is also a family medicine and public health professor at the University of Toronto. His YouTube talks on exercise, youth concussions and other prominent public health concerns have gone viral in the online world. (add links to the videos here)
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He said Dr. Google’s diagnosing tends to be biased toward more grave serious diseases. Often patients will head into his office preparing for the worst because they’ve diagnosed themselves with cancer or another serious ailment.
Sites, such as webMD, offer symptom checkers, where users can check off concerns and receive about eight to 10 possible diagnoses.
“What I see is people tend to obsess over the scary ones. They just assume the worst,” Evans said.
According to the Daily Mail, the 10 most common misdiagnoses are:
1. Breast cancer
2. Other forms of cancer
3. Thrush
4. High blood pressure
5. Asthma
6. Arthritis
7. Depression
8. Diabetes
9. Sexual health problems
10. Thyroid problems
The top symptoms online users searched were sleep problems, headaches, depression and anxiety.
Turning to the Internet to figure out why you have a headache only to turn off your laptop thinking you have breast cancer isn’t practical, but the Daily Mail notes that three-quarters of those polled felt these health issues weren’t comfortable conversations they wanted to have with friends and family.
The respondents even pointed to wait times at the doctor’s office as a reason why they only made the trip as a last resort.
“It’s troubling. People think they’re doing us a service, but it’s actually the reverse,” Evans said.
“I’d rather have you just come in and find out what it is,” he said, noting that at St. Michael’s under the Advanced Access program, physicians set aside part of their day to help patients deal with more urgent diagnostics.
Evans said that in Canada, seniors are most prone to self-diagnosing online, with recent American figures pointing to about 42 per cent of those over 65 scanning the web when they’re suspicious of an irregularity.
Evans’ advice is to turn to Dr. Google after you’ve received a diagnosis from your doctor.
His site My Favourite Medicine also refers to seven health sites he says offers patients credible advice.
Canadian options, such as Here to Help, About Kids Health and HealthLink BC, are among the options.
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