Too much advice = too much confusion

With every ailment, comes a list of advice. Do this, don't do that; eat this, don't eat that; these exercises, not those.That's fine with one ailment. But with my list of ailments, it quickly gets very confusing.

I subscribe to multiple Google Alerts - one for each ailment. Each one sends me a new list each day of articles or blog posts or some other piece of information found on line on each topic. The daily melange can include anything from somebody ran a race to fund raise for someone with one of the ailments to a medical research advancement. So there can be everything.

Including advice. Today's advice included diet secrets for arthritis, prescription review for fibromyalgia, a male oncologist who got breast cancer, and some woman and her family get lots of support after her thyroid cancer diagnosis. First of all its too much information for me to digest this early in the day, never mind later in the day.

Second of all, if I tried to select a specific topic (food/lifestyle, for example), it gets very confusing. Eat this, not that; drink this, not that; do cardio, skip cardio and do yoga, but my doctor says no yoga. Aaarrrgggghhh!

I give slightly more weight to advice from medical professionals, especially from my doctors. If one doctor gives me advice that conflicts with another doctor, I will ask what I should do.

So how do I handle all this? I do what feels right for me. That's the only way to deal with the piles of advice.

Dr Google, Dr Oz, and other bad resources

I often tell people to step away from Dr Google. But sometimes he sucks you in and you can't help it. Then there is Dr Oz who will be happy to get you to buy green coffee beans or something that someone supposedly believes will cure cancer. Well maybe Dr Oz isn't that bad but I think he's smarmy (definition: excessively or unctuously flattering, ingratiating, servile, etc.)

Finally we have those online symptom checkers to help us figure out what's wrong with us instead of going to the doctor. But they are usually wrong as well.  I admit to using online symptom checkers to see if I can figure out what is wrong with me. But since I have so many other things wrong with me, I usually ignore them too.

Now new research shows how bad the symptom checkers can be. There are many good health websites, such as WebMD, maybe even your hospital. But the symptom checkers where they try to diagnose what you have when you select your symptoms, they are not so good. They aren't so great at figuring out what is wrong with you. And they don't always send you to the doctor when you should go and sometimes send you to the doctor unnecessarily. Use your common sense instead. Or if you aren't sure on your common sense, phone a friend.

Further proof Dr Google isn't very good

Another story has come to light on how Dr Google isn't the best adviser for medical stuff. It turns out most people use Wikipedia or Web MD for information on drugs. A new story in the New England Journal of Medicine published recently talks about it.

'"Despite debates over its credibility, Wikipedia is reportedly the most frequently consulted online health care resource globally,” the authors write. “Wikipedia pages typically appear among the top few Google search results and are among the references most likely to be checked by internet users.” Wikipedia, along with Google and WebMD, is where more than half of all Americans turn to for health information, according to the report. 

Researchers found that when the FDA issues a drug safety warning, Google searches about that drug increase 82% on average in the following week. Wikipedia pages about the drug see a 175% increase in views on the day of the announcement.'

The cause for concern is that the FDA does not issue drug safety warnings and update Wikipedia - its left to the general public. WebMD is a little better but it is not proactively updated with things like drug safety warnings. If you need that kind of information you need to follow the FDA on Twitter. So the call is to get the FDA to reevaluate their social media presence''.

I'm not sure the problem is with the FDA's social media presence than there is with that fact that so many people go to Wikipedia for medical information. Wikipedia has credibility issues. It is not based on any specific information but on updates from the community. I never use Wikipedia for medical stuff because I do not trust it.

Dr Google insists in on displaying Wikipedia results prominently in so many search results so of course it is used so frequently. I think we need to learn to use more common sense and switch from Wikipedia to WebMD and other more credible sources.