Does anyone benefit from statistics?

[Toaster]

If statistics don't comfort you... stop reading here.


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I'm curious if anyone benefits from statistics when they have health concerns.

SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) in the US provides incidence rates and percentages that you will get a disease or die from it. Under their Interactive Tools there's a "Know your chances" link. You can then see your chances of dying from things in the next 10 years.

For me it really helps to put things in perspective. For instance... I fear Melanoma. Its a big worry for me. But I'm twice as likely to die from a Flu than it at my age of 27. That's comforting because I have had the Flu, and I didn't die. Or how I'm, as likely to die from Lung Cancer, which is pretty much unheard of at my age.

I use this tool when I'm a little irrational and need to remember that I'm more likely to die of homicide than Leukemia or whatever.

[paranoid-viking]

Sure. For me it is aways a reasurrance to know if my chances of vile diseases are quite low.

[Toaster]

Statistics really changed my anxiety when I learned that I could access this information.

My health anxiety was once completely unmanageable. This was 2 years ago. For an entire Christmas vacation I sat in one place not moving and not eating because I was worried about Stomach Cancer.

I learned about incidence rates and it helped majorly to see that I had like a 1 in 100,000 chance per year.

I still have health anxiety because sometimes I think a tiny chance like that is huge. One cancer I worried about recently I had actual reason to worry. It was CML, but the chances were crazy low. Because I had a high WBC, I convinced myself that my chances were actually higher. So its not always perfect.

[ErinKC]

Yes, I'm the queen of statistics in my home, haha. I know all of them and they really do help me quite a lot when I'm suffering. It also helped to learn about how statistics are manipulated for headlines (such as the use of % increase in risk vs. the actual chances of getting something).

[GlassPinata]

If statistics don't comfort you... stop reading here.


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I'm curious if anyone benefits from statistics when they have health concerns.

SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) in the US provides incidence rates and percentages that you will get a disease or die from it. Under their Interactive Tools there's a "Know your chances" link. You can then see your chances of dying from things in the next 10 years.

For me it really helps to put things in perspective. For instance... I fear Melanoma. Its a big worry for me. But I'm twice as likely to die from a Flu than it at my age of 27. That's comforting because I have had the Flu, and I didn't die. Or how I'm, as likely to die from Lung Cancer, which is pretty much unheard of at my age.

I use this tool when I'm a little irrational and need to remember that I'm more likely to die of homicide than Leukemia or whatever.

Yes! When i was worried about, say, HIV... the only thing that could comfort me was reading statistics about it (it's rarer than most people think) and working out complicated math problems estimating my likelihood of having it. Lol.
Same with many of the rare cancers I've been afraid I had.
There is something comforting about the cold equations.

PS wow, I like this interactive tool! Lol.
It says at my age (44.... I rounded up to 45) I have only a 1.05% chance of dying of any type of cancer in the next ten years.
Love it!

[Toaster]

I'm glad I was able to help!

I have about a 1% chance of dying in the next ten years. Mostly made up of accidents which I am not afraid of oddly. That's the funny part of all of this. I'm far more likely to die from an accident than any cancer, but I worry about cancer every waking moment.

[PASchoolSyndrome]

Statistics help me until they don't.. Or until I know someone who "beat the odds" and was the exception to those statistics.

That being said they definitely give me reassurance when I have a particular symptom and my mind goes to cancer. I've said this over and over is that cancer in general is still relatively rare. AND advances in technology are amazing and the hope is that you'll still die from something else before you die from cancer should you be diagnosed.

[Hancock]

Statistics are extremely beneficial. I've taken a few statistics courses back when I was in college and I still rely on it today when my health anxiety flares up. There's always that "what if I was the one in a million" thought but are any of us really that lucky/unlucky?

I've never heard of a hypochondriac who died of the thing they were most afraid of, or even got diagnosed with it. That would make us pretty lousy hypos, ya know?

[Gaby18]

Statistics help me until they don't.. Or until I know someone who "beat the odds" and was the exception to those statistics.


That's exactly where I'm at right now. I'm persuaded I'll be one of those unlucky 0.7%.

[Hancock]

I'm glad I was able to help!

I have about a 1% chance of dying in the next ten years. Mostly made up of accidents which I am not afraid of oddly. That's the funny part of all of this. I'm far more likely to die from an accident than any cancer, but I worry about cancer every waking moment.

Haha, my biggest fears aren't even on the list. I apparently have a higher risk of accident, suicide, homicide...and if I manage to survive those three, then maybe we can talk about some kind of illness :shades:

[Gary A]

Not only are the odds of getting a horrible illness pretty low, the odds of anyone being able to foresee a particular illness coming in advance is even lower.

[swajj]

Statistics help me until they don't.. Or until I know someone who "beat the odds" and was the exception to those statistics.

Same here. I knew someone who died of ovarian cancer at age 20. I knew someone who died from MND in his late 30s. I knew a couple of people who had massive heart attacks in their early 40s. One I could reassure myself that lifestyle choices contributed to an early death but not so the other. These are just a few examples of people I actually know/knew or know of, who beat the odds. I think knowing them or knowing of them contributed to my HA. So no statistics have never really helped me. However, I can see how statistics might help others. I guess it kind of depends what baggage you are carrying with your HA.

---------- Post added at 17:21 ---------- Previous post was at 17:15 ----------


Not only are the odds of getting a horrible illness pretty low, the odds of anyone being able to foresee a particular illness coming in advance is even lower.

Exactly Gary. Throughout my 3 year battle with HA I envied my husband's ability to look at the possibility of developing a serious illness as "what will be will be, if it's going to happen, no amount of worrying about it will stop it from happening. I envy anyone with that attitude.

[unsure_about_this]

Stats do me no good, I have been worried about so many cancers because of my symptoms, currently I am on worrying now about penile cancer and still worrying about testicle cancer at 33. In the past it was bowel cancer worries so silly enough check stats because I had a few symptoms

[Toaster]

The way I look at it is that no matter how many people you know with a rare disease, the statistics hold true. People don't realize how large their sample sets are sometimes. If one of my 1,000 Facebook friends gets cancer... it's not that bizarre. But the chances of it happening to one individual are still very low.

[crystal17]

Not only are the odds of getting a horrible illness pretty low, the odds of anyone being able to foresee a particular illness coming in advance is even lower.

I might sound really dumb, but what do you mean by this? Surely if you spot symptoms then you are more likely to see it coming, or is that just the HA sufferers mentality?

My thing is I always have to be in control of my health or my family's. I feel like if I can be there at the moment anything happens then it's going to help somehow.

---------- Post added at 01:16 ---------- Previous post was at 01:14 ----------


The way I look at it is that no matter how many people you know with a rare disease, the statistics hold true. People don't realize how large their sample sets are sometimes. If one of my 1,000 Facebook friends gets cancer... it's not that bizarre. But the chances of it happening to one individual are still very low.

I've always struggled to understand this, but you're right the statistics are valid. I think this has contributed to my HA massively, basically arguing with statistics!