[Note: We've been asked by our health science teacher to review five health related websites. I'm putting this first review up on my website because it relates to some personal experiences that someone else might relate to or find interesting. If you happen to find it to be neither relevant nor interesting... well, I guess that's the risk you take perusing the personal websites of no-talent wanna-be writers.]
I have to admit I've never really gone to the web looking for how to have a healthier lifestyle - because I know a lot of health related information that I tend to ignore already. I already know that a vigorous aerobic workout three or four times a week would be better for me than the once or twice a week visits to the gym that I usually manage, and that fruits and vegetables are really a healthier snack choice than Pop Tarts (although I would argue that the yummy, bubbly frosting definitely favors the Pop Tarts when it comes to toaster appeal). So, next review I promise to go out and find a bona fide health related website - but for this review I'm going to discuss how I've used the web in general and Google in particular to answer some of my more pressing health questions to date.
Generally, the only time I go on the web to look up health information is when I'm sick. I'm not talking about "gee, how can I get rid of this cold" kind of sick. I know the standard answer for that kind of problem, which is that you can wait it out, you can try various folk remedies of dubious effectiveness, and/or you can take various over the counter treatments which only affect the symptoms - all of which mostly just helps you feel like you are doing something while your body cures itself. No, I'm talking about the "what the hell are these extremely painful blisters on one side of my scalp?" kind of sick.
The "painful blisters" description goes back to the time I had shingles. Shingles is basically the childhood chicken pox you got 35 years ago coming back for a return visit - only this time chicken pox is really, really pissed (maybe because the first time it visited it was given the ridiculous name "chicken pox"). I found out that the painful blisters were shingles by going to the doctor, but I used Google to get a better handle on what shingles really is - because there's really only so much information you can process from a doctor in the five minutes he talks to you, during which time you are mostly thinking about how cold your butt is because you've been sitting on a chilly metal table for an hour wearing a paper dressing gown which is open in the back .
Anyway, on the web I learned other stuff like shingles generally affects just one side of the body because it spreads out from a major nerve where it has been hiding since your childhood, and that shingles can't be caught from someone else but a person with shingles can give someone who has never had the pleasure of it as a child a case of the chicken pox. I also learned that shingles can come back - which gives me something to look forward to (like hopefully dying of something else before I ever get shingles again).
All this info can be found one quick hop away after a Google search on sites like www.medinfo.co.uk. The same search will pop up sites specific to shingles like www.aftershingles.com, but I try to go to the more generic sites first because the topic specific sites usually have an agenda - like the site owners have had an especially bad experience which will scare the hell out of you, or maybe they are trying to sell you a particular treatment which may or may not be the modern equivalent of snake oil.
Anyway, I've found with a little judgment you can find out quite a bit of additional information about what is ailing you after your doctor points the way for you with a specific diagnosis.
On the other hand, trying to self-diagnose using Google can lead to all kinds of trouble.
To take an example which is very close to me, my wife once got a message on our answering machine telling her they wanted to rerun a blood test because they found nucleated red blood cells in her blood. Well, I remembered reading somewhere that red blood cells don't have nuclei because they are produced in the bone marrow, so I was curious what this meant. So I did a Google search, and some site said that nucleated blood cells in an adult could be a sign of metastatic cancer (among other somewhat less disastrous possibilities which didn't really make much of an impression on me at the time). Well, to make a long story short my wife and I had several pretty anxious days before the tests could be run again and we got the result back that nothing was wrong. On the positive side, we stopped fighting about stupid stuff for quite a while after that little scare, so I guess the experience wasn't all bad.
My final example about using Google relates to the Mefloquine medication my wife and I took when we to India and Thailand. When we first went there our doctor automatically prescribed Mefloquine as a preventative for Malaria. You can read more about this and other malaria preventative medications on the CDC website. Well, one night in Thailand I woke up at three in the morning with my eyes doing a jitterbug in my head like a frog on a hot frying pan. I'm guessing this lasted about 15 seconds, but it seemed at the time like the room was bouncing up and down for several minutes. I've never experienced anything like that before or since, and it was pretty damn scary.
We later talked to some Peace Corp volunteers who had been working in the Congo who said a lot of the volunteers there won't take anti-malaria medication because there were reports that it had made some people go psychotic. Here's a quote I read later off of the CDC website sighted above:
"The most common side effects reported by travelers taking mefloquine include headache, nausea, dizziness, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, vivid dreams, and visual disturbances [my emphasis]. Mefloquine has rarely been reported to cause serious side effects, such as seizures, depression, and psychosis."
Needless to say, on our next
trip to Thailand we tried a different medication, which I think had the
side effect of making me generally queasy. I think on the next
trip
to the tropics I might
just dispense with the anti-malaria drugs all together because I no
longer trust any of them, and no one who actually lives in these areas
ever take them anyway.
So that's some of my experiences with using Google for amateur medical research - for good or ill. I would say based on my experiences that this is something you want to be cautious about because there's a lot of bad information out there, and even with the good information it's very easy to come to bad conclusions based on incomplete knowledge. However, the fact is when something is wrong with my family or myself, no one is going to spend as much time doing research on our behalf as I am. So I will probably continue to use Google (with all due caution) whenever it seems like it might help me get a handle on what the hell is going on with these mysterious bodies of ours.
Regards,
The Author