Claesand
30-04-08, 21:50
Just thought I'd share a thought I've had about looking up stuff on the Internet and health anxiety... how it can mess with us assessing the likelihood of things.
There is a reporting bias that causes serious diseases to seem much more common than they are. Also, there is a psychological effect from reading case reports that is quite insidious - the same that causes us to buy lottery tickets against very long odds.
Medical science is of course concerned with serious diseases. So, if 100,000 people visit the doctor, and 10 turn out to have some disease, guess which we are going to read about? Those 10 of course... "The patient, XY a male of 32 years presented with a slight dizziness..." and so on. Could be you or me right? What it doesn't tell you is that the other 99,990 guys with a slight dizziness had just that: a slight dizziness. It's like seeing pictures every week of big lottery winners - feels like it's much more likely than it really is.
So if you search for "lump in the throat" or "dizziness" or "numbness" or something you'll turn up a list of diseases, and you are led to believe that you must have one of them. You don't. Medicine lists classified diseases. You should of course see your doctor on a regular basis... but be assured that they see all sorts of things, and the vast majority of all the things they see turn out to be harmless.
There is a reporting bias that causes serious diseases to seem much more common than they are. Also, there is a psychological effect from reading case reports that is quite insidious - the same that causes us to buy lottery tickets against very long odds.
Medical science is of course concerned with serious diseases. So, if 100,000 people visit the doctor, and 10 turn out to have some disease, guess which we are going to read about? Those 10 of course... "The patient, XY a male of 32 years presented with a slight dizziness..." and so on. Could be you or me right? What it doesn't tell you is that the other 99,990 guys with a slight dizziness had just that: a slight dizziness. It's like seeing pictures every week of big lottery winners - feels like it's much more likely than it really is.
So if you search for "lump in the throat" or "dizziness" or "numbness" or something you'll turn up a list of diseases, and you are led to believe that you must have one of them. You don't. Medicine lists classified diseases. You should of course see your doctor on a regular basis... but be assured that they see all sorts of things, and the vast majority of all the things they see turn out to be harmless.