Is this common with HA?

[lily1]

Among worrying about a symptom and then googling and thinking the worse..

Is it common for other HA suffers to also worry about a procedure that might of had then google the risks or links to bad diseases?

For example tooth canal treatment, or biopsy etc then google the risks with these.

The reason I say this is my worry seems to be non ending and I seem to convince myself I'm going to get a terrible disease from medical procedures or from other scare stories on the Internet.

Can some sites that promote books be scare mongering?

[jules321]

It certainly is a part of my HA. :( It sucks.

[lily1]

Should we believe some studies done on the Internet I've been told some of it is rubbish written or not proven studies.

[axolotl]

Should we believe some studies done on the Internet I've been told some of it is rubbish written or not proven studies.

The thing is none of us are qualified to understand most of what we read on the Internet about medical issues. Some of it is written in heavy medical jargon, and not meant for a lay audience. Even if we do think we understand it, it's hard to know if it's an article giving sound evidence or not, how tentative the findings are, or if further studies have since put doubt over its claims.

If you see studies in newspapers these are written up by journalists who usually haven't got a clue how to interpret scientific data, and add sensationalist headlines about tentative studies. A lot of studies are scientists going "there may be something here to look into further, and it may or may not be significant", which journalists will turn into "THIS THING YOU DO WILL DEFINITELY CAUSE YOU CANCER".

And, on top of our overestimation of how we can understand this material, we have our anxious minds, which cherry pick the scary bits and totally ignore anything that should be reassuring.

So leave those studies alone. They're not meant for us. There's a reason why medics do many years of training and get paid so much...