Everyone’s a Doctor
BY LINDSEY WANBERG
I emerged from the bathroom, a distant look in my eyes, dangling my phone melodramatically from the tips of my fingers. The phone display was pulled up to Google results of my search inquiry: “Why have I urinated four times in the last half-hour?” (This was a very real concern at the moment). The answer, as far as I was able to tell from my four-second search, was diabetes. Apparently the condition increases the amount of water-retaining glucose in the kidney, which then results in excess urine.
My roommate met my just-diagnosed-with-a-horrible-disease stare with a raised eyebrow.
“Uh… is everything okay-
“Yes. Except for the small little fact that GOOGLE SAYS I HAVE DIABETES,” I answered her abruptly.
She caught her breath… and then laughed. Laughed.
As it turns out, though my roommate maybe could have skipped the hurtful reaction, she was right to be skeptical of my self-diagnosis. I don’t have diabetes. Maybe cyberchondria, but not diabetes.
Increasingly, people like me are diagnosing themselves via the Internet. Google claims that the practice has become so common that it can determine flu circulation based on the geographical distribution of Google searches that mention flu symptoms. The use of Internet self-diagnoses might seem like a ridiculous trend. Why are we putting our medical fates into a search engine that is essentially a burping machine? After we enter our carefully worded inquiries (such as, “Why have I urinated four times in the last half-hour?”) a software contraption called a “spider” gathers web pages with similar words and positioning of words to ours, prioritizing the most popular websites. The search engine then spews out all of this information onto the screen, leaving us to roll up our sleeves and shuffle through it.
Because of the nature of its process, some academics argue that the Internet cannot be an accurate source for diagnoses. A study published by the Microsoft Corporation discovered that a web search attributed the searched symptom “headache” to a result of caffeine withdrawal and a brain tumor with equal probability. In reality, the chance of having a brain tumor is 1 in 10,000– not very probable. With all of the pumpkin spice lattes getting chugged down before midterms, I think it’s safe to bet that caffeine withdrawal is the much more likely cause of your headache than cancer. Overall, the Pew Research Center found that the doctors of 18 percent of those who diagnosed themselves online disagreed with the diagnosis or “offered a different opinion about the condition”.
On her show, Ellen DeGeneres discussed one of the harsh effects of self-diagnosis unreliability: “[The Internet] makes us worry about things that we don’t need to worry about… you can spend hours diagnosing what you think you have… [and when] you finally go to a real doctor… he says that weird spot you have on your face is chocolate pudding.” She proceeded to lick imaginary pudding off of her face and the audience erupted in laugher. In her own way, Ellen DeGeneres is explaining the concept of “cyberchondria”. This is the official term, as defined by the Microsoft study, for “unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology based on the review of search results and literature online.” The argument here is that self-diagnosis is more harmful than helpful because people tend to spiral into a pit of anxiety, believing they have a terminal illness when of course, they really don’t. One in five people will experience this panic after conducting their self-diagnoses. Angry cyberchondriacs can vouch for this– an especially vocal woman stated that “googling symptoms is more dangerous than cancer itself.”
If self-diagnoses are so risky, why have one third of adults in the United States pursued an Internet diagnosis at some point? A 2005 study conducted by Even J. Lanseng and Tor W. Andreassen from the Norwegian School of Management outlined the answer. The study stated that because Internet diagnoses are “at your convenience and tempo, no travel to or wait time at healthcare provider,” the tool “may improve patient perceived service quality [and] patient satisfaction”. Lanseng and Andreassen underline the potential of self-diagnosis technology to reduce waste of both patient and healthcare resources.
Furthermore, self-diagnoses for certain conditions can improve treatment. The Graduate School of Nursing’s Director of Research Annemarie Jutil discovered that catching conditions such as heartburn, headaches, urinary tract infections, yeast infections, and the common cold early through self-diagnosis (these conditions are relatively easy to self-determine) “permit[s] earlier access to appropriate treatment and improved outcomes.” Identifying these conditions will save patients from a lot of discomfort. Many of the remedies are available over-the-counter, so after a quick Internet search and a trip to the local Target, a sick man can be on his way to healthy horizons.
Finally, for the people who don’t experience crippling cyberchondria, searching the Internet for possible diagnoses can be relieving. Lanseng and Andreassen’s study found that while “about 13 percent… expressed their anxiety regarding information found on the internet… a total of 48 percent was actually calmed.” In a panel discussion on medical web-searches, Victoria Lambert, Chair of the Medical Journalist Association gives an example of a man with erectile dysfunction who would have benefited from Internet self-diagnosis. The man she described waited four years to bring up his problem to the doctor. “His home life’s a mess, he’s stressed, his job life’s ruined… and he can’t talk to anyone about it,” she explains. She continues, offering what could have been a modern solution. “The alternative is now he will go online [and] from day one, he’s not on his own”. In many cases, knowledge is a source of power and comfort. Perhaps the more we know about our bodies, the better off we will be.
In the future, self-diagnosis may be even more common. However, self-diagnoses will likely shift away from the Internet and into the direction of medical home tests. A biology professor at the University of Texas, Andrew Ellington, has already begun to research the development of home tests for common illnesses such as the flu. NPR described it as “[sneezing] into a specially formulated tissue, and the resulting color transformation in the tissue gives you your [diagnosis].” These tests can be printed on paper for about five cents and therefore have the potential to be accessible for everyone.
Seem unrealistic? Ellington urges us to think about how far self-diagnosis has already come. Back in the olden days (around the 1920s), some women got their urine injected into a rabbit at the doctor’s office to see if they were pregnant. If the rabbit’s ovaries swelled up (the only way the doctor could tell this was to cut open the rabbit, killing it), the woman was pregnant. However, today, pregnancy tests are much different. You can pick one up at Student Health Services, pee on the little stick, and find out within several patient and calm moments whether you are pregnant. “If we can detect pregnancy, why is it that we can’t detect lots of other things?” Ellington remarked.
The lesson here is to take self-diagnoses with responsibility and skepticism. Humans are terrified of disease– look at what’s happened with the Ebola virus. There’s panic, even expectations for Ebola to blanket the planet in apocalypse. As my English professor commented last week, “this could be it.” Along these lines, I urge you not to and take the Ebola diagnostic quiz on selectsmart.com (it gives an 81% chance of having the disease to people with normal flu symptoms) unless you are willing to interpret the information with great responsibility. Self-diagnoses can be helpful, calming, and might even save you a trip to the doctor, but they must be made with caution. We don’t want everyone who has a cold thinking they have Ebola, and we certainly don’t want every college student who drank too much soda thinking they have diabetes. That was a close one.