Healthy Living

“Please don’t get your medical advice from the internet.” I have said that repeatedly to friends, family, and even in previous health columns. Medical advice is what primary care providers are for.

A case in point:  my friend read something on the web about her symptoms and became extremely anxious and upset.  A week later, when she finally sat down and discussed it with her primary care provider, she was relieved to find that the web advice was totally false.  She had wasted valuable time and energy, did some foolish treatment that could have resulted in serious side effects, and spent a week in anguish for nothing.  Her doctor reassured her and set her on the right course of treatment.  Naturally, she vows never to repeat that foolish action again.  

“I want patients to know that every person has a unique genetic makeup,” says Dr. Christopher Awtrey, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, reaffirming why people should not rely on Googling to get medical advice. One person may require vastly different treatment than someone else receiving the same diagnosis.

Now, that being said, there are some internet sites where accurate and reliable information can be found.   Good sources of health information include:

•  Sites that end in ".gov," sponsored by the federal government, like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (www.hhs.gov), the National Institutes of Health (www.nih.gov), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov).

•  .edu sites, created by universities or medical schools, such as Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine or University of California at Berkeley Hospital, or other healthcare facility sites, like Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic.

•  .org sites maintained by not-for-profit groups whose focus is research and teaching the public about specific diseases or conditions, such as the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association and, of course, hospitals like Backus.

•  Sites whose addresses end in .com are usually commercial sites and are often selling products.

I asked Dr. John Greeley, a primary care physician at the Backus Family Health Center at Crossroads in Waterford to weigh in on this issue and this is his response:

“There are many sources of health information out there and I don’t mind if people search for information on the internet, as long as they bring their questions and concerns to me at their next appointment so I can validate the information and we can proceed with an appropriate plan.  Seeking information from the internet and other sources is a great starting point, but patients should not act on this information without first filtering it through their physician,” Dr. Greeley said.

Sounds like very good advice we can all live with.