Are you a Cyberchondriac?

In today’s world, information on the web is readily made available to all with an Internet connection and an inquisitive mind. With all the information on the Internet, it is easy for one to research historical events, analysis of a favorite book, or even how toilet paper was invented.

However, researchers have recently discovered that some information is leading to health anxieties. Now, more than ever, people are taking to the Internet to find what could be a likely cause of some symptom he or she is experiencing. While in essence it may not seem too bad, the problem lies in the fact that searches are coming up with a myriad of possible diseases, and people are often diagnosing and/or worrying over diseases and conditions he/she might not even have- conditions which are oftentimes rare and terrifying.

The problem when users quickly come upon a serious medical condition during a search, says Eric Horvitz, M.D., Ph.D., is that they tend to assume that very rare medical conditions are much more common than they really are—something called availability bias.

Availability bias is a type of bias formulated the human brain/psyche which causes people to overestimate the probability of certain events happening. As Dr. Horvitz explains,It's availability bias that makes people worry more about their children being kidnapped than being in a car accident, more likely to fear death by flying than death by crossing the street.

So, a simple search of “muscle twitches” is likely to bring up something serious like Lou Gehrig’s disease over a more probable condition, such as benign fasciculation. Despite the fact that Lou Gehrig’s disease has a 1 in 55,000 probability, “Cyberchondriacs,” or people who may be experiencing health anxieties, are much more likely to think they have Lou Gehrig’s over benign fasciculation.

Afterwards, people will then begin to spend more time researching the rare condition Dr. Horvitz and his colleague Ryen White found that, in some cases, people were spending 10-15 percent of their subsequent search time investigating the disease, suggesting a growing anxiety.

Hypochondria only affects about 5 percent of the population, but with the medical information on the web which provides information about more serious conditions over more common conditions, Dr. Horvitz suspects that more people than we know have health anxiety or can be put into that position by searching on the Web.

Source:
http://health.msn.com