The Downside of Connected Healthcare: Cyberchondria 79
MollsEisley writes: Like hypochondria, cyberchondria is simply a more elegant way of saying "it's all in your head" — only in this case the people self-diagnosing are using tenuous data gleaned from the Internet and our ever-connected gadgets to support their hypotheses. Virtually everyone who has put the Microsoft Band through its paces has come away with the claim that its heart rate monitor is simply bad. ... The Moto 360’s heart rate monitor doesn’t fare much better, and in only the most perfect, motionless conditions will it provide anything close to an accurate reading. These are horribly inaccurate health tools, yet they are used as bullet points for would-be buyers to cling to. ... Even WebMD—the service that has given so many cyberchondriacs the fuel to continue guessing—has a note on every single one of its countless pages that states the site “does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.” And yet, that’s the one and only thing most people use WebMD for.
In recent study... (Score:1)
A recent medical study showed that frequent masturbation can actually reduce a man's chances of developing prostate cancer, as well as numerous other illnesses.
After doing a self diagnosis I've discovered I'm going to live forever.
The downside of having too much time in hands (Score:2)
The downside of one-sided propaganda (Score:5, Informative)
TFA is a naked propaganda from the medical profession
They made up a new term by attaching "cyber" to one of their existing term to denote the 'foolishness' of their patients
But on the other hand, the medical profession themselves never - and dare not to - tell the world how many patients they have killed, either due to mis-diagnose, or wrongly prescribe medicine to their patients
I won't mention any other case other than one that happened to my dear old dad --- he has high blood pressure and every single day he has to take medicine to put his blood pressure back into the 'normal' range
One time a doctor (not the same doctor, but another doctor) prescribed him another medicine (for what I forgot) and when he took that new medicine with his high blood pressure pills his blood pressure shot way up, to 200 over 160, or so
Alarmed at that all the other members my family were about to rush him to the hospital, I gathered up all his medicine and ran a check online
Long and behold, the new medication, as indicated by many online sites, can *NOT* be taken with the type of high blood pressure medicine that my dad was taking
I asked him to stop taking that new medication, and within 8 hours his blood pressure dropped back to his 'normal' range (by only taking his usual high blood pressure medicine)
Yet, the medical profession tried to imply that people like me who checked information online are 'cyber' whatever
I rather be 'cyber' whatever than put my blind trust on anyone, especially those who could - intentionally or not, - prescribe me medication that can burst my arteries and veins
Re:The downside of one-sided propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
Woah there. Relax.
Anything that promotes professionals over quacks and amateurs is a good thing. Considering the source of health information for most people comes from nonsense planted into the news media by quacks, I can't see anything negative in promoting talking to professionals.
Re:The downside of one-sided propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
>I can't see anything negative in promoting talking to professionals.
Thanks, that will be $70 for removing a splinter, $70 for a cold that can't be treated, $70 for a minor sprained ankle that you should just stay off of for a week or two. There are times for professionals and there are times that they simply aren't needed. If you don't have hundreds of dollars to spend listening to people tell you something is minor and to come back if it gets worse then you need to use sound judgement instead of running to the doctor with every boo boo. Sound judgement includes consulting reasonable information sources but it all to often seems they are paywalled, tort-terrorized into saying "just see a doctor" or blocked out by quackery websites.
That doctor traffic also is why often you can't get an appointment to have someone look at a significant condition for a week and a half and why Americans go to the emergency room so often - where they can wait long periods before being treated for serious issues. That is the downside in promoting talking to professionals. There is no downside in shooting down quacks unless worse quacks take their place.
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The $70 for removing a splinter is a small price to pay to avoid sepsis. Of course, you don't get charged $70 unless you can't get the damned splinter out and the wound disinfected and bandaged yourself. Minor sprain? It's terrible how that might actually be a fracture. You might want to have that checked out. However, most people who can still walk on it get by fine with RICE - rest, ice, compression, and elevation. And a call to my doctor's office on these things tend to get that message from the care tea
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Thanks, that will be $70 for removing a splinter, $70 for a cold that can't be treated, $70 for a minor sprained ankle that you should just stay off of for a week or two.
Thats more a problem with health care in the US being profit based.
For me it's $0 to remove a splinter, $0 for a cold (I'll need a medical note for work if I'm going to be off for a few days) and $0 for a minor sprained ankle (to be fair, the doctor will give me some compression bandages for my $0).
But we have a well regulated (gasp) medical system that isn't built for profit. We also dont have long wait times. If need be I can see a doctor in anything from a few minutes to a few hours at a walk in cl
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No, it really is kind of a big deal. WebMD is for-profit and largely funded by advertisers such as pharmaceutical companies. The site uses clickbait-style headlines to drive page views and actively preys on fear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02... [nytimes.com]
http://www.washingtontimes.com... [washingtontimes.com]
(I replied to the wrong post above, sorry for the dupe)
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My impression is that most physicians feel they have far too little time to investigate and think about patients' problems. In the U.S., I imagine that comes from a limited number of doctors, (proximately) from insurance companies.
I'd wager that if doctors, especially GP's, had twice as much time per patient, a lot of your concerns would be alleviated.
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They made up a new term by attaching "cyber" to one of their existing term to denote the 'foolishness' of their patients
I have a hard time taking anything titled with "cyber" in it seriously.
Everytime I hear "cybersecurity" I keep thinking we're getting a call from several decades back and science fiction is looking for a lost prefix.
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No, it really is kind of a big deal. WebMD is for-profit and largely funded by advertisers such as pharmaceutical companies. The site uses clickbait-style headlines to drive page views and actively preys on fear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02... [nytimes.com]
http://www.washingtontimes.com... [washingtontimes.com]
Self-diagnosis (Score:4, Insightful)
Surely hyperchondria will always find a way, the internet just makes it more efficient? In fairness to WebMD, what something is intended for and what people choose to use it for can be very different - I'd say, up to a reasonable point, if WebMD is fulfilling its primary purpose for which it was created, people need to take responsibility for the risks they take in depending on it while ignoring the advice to defer to a clinician, whether there's five of them or five hundred thousand. If they can't understand that responsibility, the problem is with the education system, not the internet.
Somebody recently pointed out that if you Google "chest pain" you could end up thinking it was harmless and you should just ignore it. They evidently hadn't tried Googling it. I continue to see ads on the TV saying, "please use your common sense if you have cold or flu symptoms to decide whether you have a serious risk, as going to your GP or A&E blocks services for others", and not "if you think you have a brain tumour, stay at home", so it seems internet self-diagnosis may not even be the primary issue. At what percentage do the few serious cases, who wouldn't have otherwise bothered going to a doctor, outweigh the number of Cyberchondriacs enabled by the same process?
It's the "you can't sue us" escape clause. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come now.
The reason that line exists is obviously for legal liability, it isn't any sort of evidence of how accurate (or lack of) WebMD considers their own information.
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While it's certainly useful from a liability standpoint, it also is there to recognize the simple fact that a list of conditions/symptoms is not, and could never be, a diagnosis.
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I don't think it's about the accuracy of their information. It's about your own "qualifications" to make a diagnosis based on a web page.
Reading a web page doesn't make you an MD. And if you spend your time reading descriptions of medical symptoms, sooner or later you'll find something you think applies to you. It happens to med students.
And then you go into your doctor screeching about how you have Snarfelitis and desperately need the medication you saw on TV to treat it which Astrazenica is hawking for
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I don't think it's about the accuracy of their information. It's about your own "qualifications" to make a diagnosis based on a web page.
It's about the Medical Guilds wanting to retain control over our health.
If anyone told you that you shouldn't try to work out what's wrong with your car, and you should have to go to a qualified mechanic to get a piece of paper that allows you to buy replacement parts, which may not even fix the problem your car really has, you'd think they were insane. So why do people accept the same nonsense when their own body is involved?
The last couple of times my girlfriend had to go to the doctor, we already knew wh
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And had the treatment you thought you needed not worked, you'd be complaining the doctor was incompetent because they listened to you rather than doing their own research.
Quite obviously you're a programmer because you know everything and your work is never wrong.
Privacy and freedom. (Score:2)
Those are the costs of "connected" healthcare. Humans are a hateful venfeful bunch and maybe those qualities served them well in the past by ridding themselves of the ill suited for humanhood, but today the homogenity these qualities aspire to will also lead to mankinds demise. Diversity is the key to survival, not "sameness".
Early symptoms of many diseases... (Score:2)
....are very similar, probably because the human body responds to different threats in similar manners. Self diagnosis is, at least today, the only way to busy bodies out of ones private business sadly.,
Self-diagnosis (Score:5, Informative)
My ex-wife had a serious, debilitating condition that saw her in chronic pain and sometimes housebound.
It was only when I met her and realised that there was something wrong that I asked her about it and she realised it WASN'T normal to be in constant pain, unable to walk. But there was more than that. The doctors had put her on painkillers, antidepressants, sleeping tablets, etc. to try to ease the symptoms but nobody had actually bothered to diagnose it.
And there were odd things. Her joints were in constant pain but, when she wasn't hurting, she was able to do karate moves that Jean Claude Van Damme would be jealous of. She had an extreme range of movement. And when she was in pain, things like her knees and elbows would GO BACKWARDS, making it even more painful to do anything and making her unable to walk.
We looked up the symptoms. The first batch of hits was Hypermobility Syndrome (now called Joint Hypermobility Syndrome). The list of things is gave as common side-effects and symptoms fit perfectly, as well as a number of things that until we read them we didn't think were related at all. It's a genetic defect in the way collagen is made, which gives so many odd and unrelated symptoms that it stands out by a mile.
We printed everything off, went to the doctor. He was astounded. He'd never heard of it. He'd never realised she had the range of symptoms available to match it even if he had. He sent her immediately to a consultant specialist. In two minutes, and a simple joint-range test, he said "Yes, you have hypermobility". Within a month, she was able to claim disability. Within a couple of years, she was managing the condition and had enough support to return back to work and live a pretty normal life (even teaches karate). Because now she KNOWS what she has, she knows what to do and what not to do, and has constant, background medication of the right kind to combat the pain. At one point, she was going to be put on morphine to stop the pain because they just didn't know what it was.
It was that easy. And it wouldn't have happened without a bit of Internet research. She'd suffered for nearly 30 years with it without any diagnosis (once she was told she might have arthritis - which is an extremely common misdiagnosis of hypermobility symptoms - but they excluded it because, well, she could move her joints more than anyone else!). And she'd had suffered at least several more if we hadn't bothered to check symptoms.
Doctors aren't perfect. Don't just assume they are stupid, though. But only you know your symptoms, only you have the time and effort and impetus to find out what you have (especially if you live in a country where doctors get paid by the test, fucking disgusting), and only you are the one who will benefit if you find out what you have.
The doctor was great, once he knew we were right. He was supportive and immediately helpful. He just didn't know about every condition on the planet. And although she has a diagnosis, there is no real prognosis - the condition never gets better, but at least you can manage it. The consultant basically diagnosed her and then that was it - there's nothing you can really do, medically, to "fix" it.
So don't be a hyperchondriac and think you have everything. But if you're certain something's wrong, and you find something that matches, see what the differentials are and see if you can't get it eliminated. At the very least, if your doctors note that you asked about it and they said it "couldn't be" that thing, then you have something to go and push in their face when they turn out to be wrong. But more likely, they will try to appease you that it's NOT that thing, run a few tests, and therefore get you closer to a real diagnosis.
Internet research isn't useless, if you have half a brain.
Re:Self-diagnosis (Score:5, Interesting)
You didn't mention the actual condition (apart from the joint hypermobility syndrome) but the fact that you said it is genetic defect affecting collagen makes me think the condition is Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.
As someone who has been in a similar situation for all of my 26 years of life, and also managed to self diagnose after a lot of research, I can completely understand this. I too did not know that it wasn't normal to be in chronic pain all the time until a few years ago... the search for a reason began. It wasn't until my own research led me to joint hypermobility syndrome, and then onto Ehlers Danlos, that anyone even bothered to pay attention. Almost all of my joints bend backwards, my skin is super stretchy and I have many other related symptoms (that in and of themselves do not seem to point to something larger... until you connect the dots)
I have sat in countless Drs offices and explained my symptoms, and been told it was all normal. It wasn't until about a year ago that I actually told a GP to google Ehlers Danlos and check off my symptoms against the lists described on various websites. Sure enough... he sent me to a specialist straight away, and, just like your wife, it turns out there actually was something wrong.... Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.
Since then I have started exploring treatment options, some of which are helpful, others not so much. I also will probably be in the situation where I have to apply for disability while I try to stabilise my condition and get myself back on my feet and figure out my long term plan, but like your wife, atleast now I know what to do and what not to do.
It is reassuring to know I am not the only one in this situation, and I am glad to hear of the positive outcome you have had when dealing with such horrible problems. I feel for your wife and the pain and suffering she has endured over the years but I am filled with hope that she is now coping with her condition and leading a much better life.
Thank you for your post. After a day filled with specialist appointments (a few of which I had to explain my condition to) it is good to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that you, like me, found self diagnosis to be useful in what is a very rare and obscure condition (that many Drs have not even heard of).
All the best and thank you to you both, from another 'bendy' individual
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Awareness of all the related conditions is growing. I work in schools and I've spoken to several school nurses who have each said "Oh, yes, I've got a couple of kids on my books with that condition, I know what that is".
My wife's cousin (much younger than her) has also been diagnosed with EDS since and there are several "traits" of her mother and father that - now we're looking for them - look like she may have just been a bad combination of both their genes (both having pseudo-JHS/EDS conditions in their
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And nine months previously ^_^
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Hmmm...we covered Ehler-Danlos and collagen synthesis disorders the first year of med school (might have even been in the first couple of months).
Glad to hear you finally got a diagnosis.
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You make an important point about not realizing that symptoms are abnormal and thus are actually symptoms of something.
I suffered from arthritis all my life, but wasn't diagnosed until my late 20s. It explained a lot, and was a huge weight off. Before then I just assumed it hurt everyone to do certain things, but they just kept quiet about it like I did. Aching was normal when sitting still for five minutes, right? Sounds stupid now but when you don't know any better...
I feel like there should be some way t
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"Ex-wife". So you helped her get back into life, and she rewarded you by bailing?
What other choice is there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What other choice is there? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Until I moved a couple of years ago, I had a doctor that was the exact opposite. It wasn't unusual for him to spend half an hour going over things with me, and he also practiced what he preached - the guy was in his 60s, but didn't smoke and was ridiculously fit. He was also almost always behind on his appointment schedule, but I cut him
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My wife's GP was just like that, but France's socialized healthcare structure made life impossible for him so he moved to Switzerland :(
Re:What other choice is there? (Score:4, Interesting)
Physicians don't do diagnoses like they used to. They look at you, consider your condition for all of 5 seconds, and prescribe whatever will get you out of their hair. They don't diagnose, they don't think, they don't care. When I had my condition a couple of years ago, one of the doctors actually asked me what tests I wanted to run. I was like, what the fuck, how the fuck should I know? But that's how it is. So what is there to do? Do your own research on the internet and become your own pathologist. :( And unfortunately there are tons of spammer optimized-for-google pages out there for every medical condition in the world. They all have a few paragraphs of useless copy and tons of ads inline. Go to a forum? It's all the same, pages of questions and few answers. So you have to spend tons of time learning about your symptoms from the ground up, and then try to guess what you might have, and then go ask a doctor for those tests. Good luck diagnosing yourself, because doctors don't do that shit any more.
You're right. It's because doctors have "Stats" now. Like they're DSL tech support reps. The HMO's got tired of the doctors ordering all that expensive "Treatment"
Every time I go in I take in all my own literature, much to my doctors dismay who gets irritated and once even suggested that I had Hypochondria. I said, "Great, you finally made a diagnoses. Now treat me." Unsurprisingly he did not schedule a followup mental health appointment for me. When I got to the doctor I go well prepared like I'm about to file a lawsuit. You have to bully doctors into doing their jobs these days.
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This has been my experience too, unfortunately. But, hey, at least your doctor straight-out asked you what tests you wanted. I had to argue with mine just to get to that point.
For most of my life I’ve had episodes of tachycardia, intense nausea+vomiting, severe muscular weakness and dizziness happening seemingly randomly sometimes after physical exertion or exposition to cold. I’ve had an abnormally early puberty with almost absent secondary sexual characteristics. Also, at times my limbs become
Better WebMD than Wikipedia (Score:2)
At least WebMD doesn't have editors [wikipedia.org] going around changing medical articles to make them more negative and pessimistic, while no more informative or accurate than before.
It's like, The placebo effect is one of the most important contributors to patient recovery, so why are you TRYING to destroy it?
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Uncross your arms
Take and throw them to the cure
Say, "I do believe."
Uncross your arms now
Take 'em to it
Say, "I do believe
I do believe."
nothing new (Score:2)
Move on, nothing to see.
Hypochondria is alive, well and getting stronger. Look how big pharma companies have been trading. Look at the slew of new "diseases" and the "disorders" that were not considered anything other than an expression of an energized growing human youth.
Personally I use WebMD for Information (Score:3)
Personally, I use WebMD for information about something after I or a friend have been diagnosed. I guess I'm not "most people." :P
New usage of article summary. (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
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I'm baffled, how being more involved in your own health is a bad thing.
Because if people didn't have to go to a doctor to tell them the obvious and prescribe the drugs they already know they need from five minutes on Google, doctors might not be able to buy another Porsche.
ah yea... (Score:3)
I've heard this and heard this. I say, SCREW DOCTORS. Oh... I'm making you do your job by looking things up on the internet. I'm sorry if I'm messing up your "Stats" by refusing to take the random pill you suggested this week and requested an actual exam.
I've had a couple of health problems in my life that went on for years I went through doctor after doctor, pill after pill and no doctor went further than whatever the last drug rep to visit their office had suggested. In one case I had almost constant fatigue, I was falling asleep in the middle of the day, then would get manic, sweating profusely. They blew me off, told me it was "All in my head" sent me to a shrink... Then Finally my wife was watching Opra one day and that's when she had her Thyroid issues and went on T.V. to tell everyone to get theirs checked. Her symptoms were similar to some of mine so I went back to the doctor and asked "Have you ever checked my TSH?" It's a standard, rudimentary test for thyroid function that everyone should have checked once a year by most accounts. The doctor looked through my chart... nope! Sure enough I had Graves Disease. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
Opra Winfery diagnosed me. I'd been through probably a dozen doctors and it was a talk show host. Even then, my regular doctor and a specialist refused to do anything.. at all... saying that even medication would mess up their testing! This went on for months. I switched doctors, the new doctor also refused and suggested that the HMO had procedures he had to follow. Eventually I ended up having a Thyroid Storm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
and ended up in the Emergency Room. They called an on-call Endocrinologist who was floored my levels were at what they were at and prescribed me medication and told me I needed to demand Radio-iodine treatment asap. I explained all the trouble I was having and he said "Once they get this ER bill I doubt you'll have any more trouble." He was right. I switched HMO's 2 months later.
Doctors can burn in hell. They don't care about people, they care about keeping their HMO/PPO happy and making their bonuses. I could have died because of their incompetence and focus on their bottom line.
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Doctors these days are employees - just like you. Your boss tells you to "improve quality" (i.e., "financial quality") by increasing throughput, sticking to Bayesian most-probable/most cost-effective care pathways, and sticking to the script, you'll do it, if you value your job. Remember - just because a doctor doesn't diagnose you correctly (especially for low probability conditions) doesn't mean he's diagnosing everyone incorrectly. In fact, outliers happen.
Sorry for your bad experience, but medicine is s
Of course you can take things too far... (Score:1)
but I've always thought it was strange that people will spend days learning about, debugging, and fixing their car or computer, but if something is wrong with them they assume they can't learn about it and help themselves.
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but I've always thought it was strange that people will spend days learning about, debugging, and fixing their car or computer...
Who are these "people"? Sure, there are some who will do this - and this being Slashdot, we've probably got a population enriched in them - but if you take a random person with a car or computer problem, they will just ask (respectively) their local mechanic or teenager--in exactly the same way that many people approach their doctors.
Yes, there exist people who will try to troubleshoot their cars, computers, or their own bodies. And there exist subsets within those groups who can are capable of doing so
that's butt covering (Score:2)
“does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment” is legal butt-covering, and shouldn't be taken as anything else.
WebMD a starting point (Score:3)
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I do a similar thing these days. I lost my trust in doctors (which appear to be turning into the IT industry real fast...bad) one an emergency visit. I was having heart palpitations at seemingly random moments. When it happened on an airplane, it really freaked me out. So I went to a doctor as I was going to fly to Europe and didn't want it to happen again. They did an EKG and blood tests. They found nothing and said it must be anxiety. Anyone who knows me knows I am the least anxious person out ther
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Seems inevitable to me that the number of those that will self-diagnose and even attempt self-remedy whenever possible is on the rise. High deductible plans are becoming the norm.
I wonder how many are labeled as hypochondriacs who are really financially forced to make best guesses via whatever online resource(s) and experiment with homeopathic solutions? Yes there are plenty of true hypos out there, but besides those.....I wonder!
Not new ... (Score:2)
People have been using the interwebs to fuel hypochondria for at least a decade. Starting with WebMD and moving on.
I was once told by someone that pretty much a huge chunk of med students develop it for a period ... because you suddenly start to know what every symptom might suggest and you start looking for it.
It's called Medical Student's Disease [wikipedia.org], and sounds like it's been referenced for over 100 years.
So, surprise. Having access to the medical descriptions of disease can make you paranoid.
Only now it'
New Years resolution (Score:1)
Lets all stop using the word "cyber" it's not the 90's mmmmm kay.
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you mean I don't have to say www anymore?
I'm famous ? (Score:1)
but, but, but.... (Score:2)
morgellons
GPs vs Specialists (Score:2)
I remember a scene from "The Love Boat" of all places. The ship's doctor, a GP, and another doctor, a specialist, were arguing.
Specialist: "GPs know less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything."
GP retort: "Specialists know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing."
This was a great example of the explosion of knowledge we've had in modern times. GPs can't keep up with everything we are learning, specialists focus their knowledge. As patients we
Sometimes the Internet saves lives (Score:2)
Like that one time a guy peed on his girlfriend's pregnancy test, got a positive result and posted a picture on Reddit.
Someone pointed out it was a sign of testicular cancer and saved the dude's life.