Sick Day On The Internet These days Im sick, and its the sole thing on my mind, so lets talk about health and the Internet. I dont mean dont sit too close to your monitor or make sure your keyboard and mouse setup are ergonomic or any of the other helpful tips to maintaining good health while choosing to use the computer. No, I mean the specific intersection of the Internet and your health: medical conditions that only exist on the Internet and in the minds of the people discussing them. Where the Nigerian banker emails, overpayment hoaxes, and discount prescription medication scams have gone before, so too go the medical information scams. In particular, there are two diseases that can be discussed quite a bit online, but which youll never hear diagnosed by a doctor nor read about in the medical journal. Actually, you can seem them discussed in the medical journal, but only for the purpose of debunking them: neither of these kinds of diseases can be real. Both Wilsons temperature fatigue and adrenal fatigue are terms applied to general collections of vague symptoms, any of which you can chalk up to everyday activities experienced by absolutely absolutely everyone. Do you need coffee to get through your day, and have a sweet tooth? According to proponents of adrenal fatigue, you are probably suffering from that disease without realizing it. Wilsons temperature fatigue, identified primarily through a relatively low body temperature, was supposedly identified by a a doctor in Florida who promotes a product specifically designed to counteract this syndrome. Unsurprisingly, this product is not recommended by any additional doctors or medical associations, and it is not covered by any manner of insurance. Just because these types of diseases do not really exist does not mean that people necessarily accept that as fact. Try telling anyone in the pro-adrenal fatigue community that their disease is fake and youll be angrily rebuffed, met with claims that research organizations and foundations want to minimize the disease for some conspiratorial reason. Why would absolutely everyone do this? Look at the symptoms, and the answer is each simple and unfortunate. These people start out feeling pretty poorly and arent getting any real advice from their doctors beyond basic diet regulation and exercise, so they turn to the Internet for a second opinion. Pretty soon they discover that theres a whole community of folks just like them, all with exactly the same experience regarding the professional medical field. They are not alone anymore. Between this and the hope that this terrible feeling is one thing for that they can just take some medicine and make it go away, they desperately do not want this to be fake, although they might not recognize that on a conscious level. Anyone who gainsays them not only damages the foundation of their community however also threatens their hope for a cure, so the gainsayer must be wrong. These types of can be far from the one diseases allegedly marginalized by the mainstream community and vastly self-diagnosed on the Internet, but theyre the one ones that have roughly zero basis in medical science. One additional syndrome thats commonly self-diagnosed online is Aspergers syndrome, that is characterized primarily by difficulty in social interaction and obsession with specific interests to the exclusion of others. While many of all those self-diagnosing on the Internet as Aspergers sufferers have legitimate claims, a handful of others claim the syndrome without any evidence save for social awkwardness. Unfortunately for legitimate Aspergers sufferers, these kinds of false claimants would rather have something to blame for their poor ability to socially interact; after all, if it is a medical condition it cant be their fault. This really is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Morgellons syndrome, somatoform disorder, and a handful of additional diseases and syndromes consist of a nugget of truth under a mountain of Internet self-diagnosis. This is to say virtually nothing of the vast number of conditions that can be misdiagnosed due to user error on sites like WebMD. The bottom line here is usually that if you dont feel well and you think it can be more serious than your average cold or whatnot, go and see your doctor and if you dont agree with what he says then get your second opinion from another doctor. Just dont rely on online sources when you could deal with trained professionals. I am a Local SEO specialist. I get to work from home and handle all the local seo services for my clients. I love my work as a SEO Professional.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 06:01:24 +0000