Goodbye Dr. Google and Self-Diagnosis: 5 Pitfalls of Acting Like Your Own Doctor

Raise your hand if you’ve ever Googled caus­es for a headache, gone down a rab­bit hole, and deter­mined that you have a rare dis­ease that will most like­ly kill you with­in 24 hours.

Now raise your hand if you have ever had every symp­tom under the sun — but didn’t have the time to deal with it — so you con­vinced your­self that it’s ​“not real­ly that bad.” 

(Hands down now).

While it’s nor­mal to fall into the trap of try­ing to diag­nose your­self, it tru­ly is just that: a trap. 

Here are 5 rea­sons why it’s a much bet­ter idea to con­sult an actu­al doc­tor instead of Dr. Google:

1. You Might Mis­di­ag­nose Your­self — And Work Your­self Into a Panic.

Let’s revis­it that first sce­nario where you’ve decid­ed that that minor headache will prob­a­bly be the begin­ning of the end. 

It’s true that a headache could be a sign of some­thing more sin­is­ter, like bleed­ing in the brain (which affects approx­i­mate­ly 23 out of every 100,000 peo­ple in the US each year). But a minor headache is prob­a­bly more like­ly to be a ten­sion headache (the most com­mon type of headache, affect­ing 2 out of 3 adults), which isn’t asso­ci­at­ed with brain disease. 

It’s a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion for symp­toms like the occa­sion­al sore throat or a low-grade fever, which can often be chalked up to minor ill­ness­es such as a com­mon cold or sea­son­al allergies. 

If you con­stant­ly con­vince your­self that your stuffy nose is the start of your immi­nent demise, you might wind up work­ing your­self into a pan­ic. And for some peo­ple, that anx­i­ety could be the start of a vicious cycle — the anx­i­ety man­i­fests phys­i­cal­ly, which makes you more anx­ious, which brings on more symptoms. 

Accord­ing to a 2019 sur­vey, 65% of Amer­i­cans report­ed attempt­ing to diag­nose them­selves on Google — but more than half of the self-diag­noses were incor­rect. Of these respon­dents, 43% incor­rect­ly con­vinced them­selves they had a seri­ous ill­ness, and 74% said that self-diag­nos­ing stressed them out.

2. Or, You Might Not Get Diag­nosed at All.

Now let’s revis­it sce­nario #2: You don’t want to admit that you’re sick, so you just keep chug­ging along like noth­ing is wrong.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this can mean miss­ing the memo that there actu­al­ly is some­thing hap­pen­ing that needs med­ical attention. 

In some instances, that might mean that you don’t stay in and get the rest you need, which could make you feel even worse or expose oth­ers to a con­ta­gious illness.

In more seri­ous cas­es, ignor­ing symp­toms for long enough could have seri­ous con­se­quences. For exam­ple, if you notice a lump in your breast, it’s crit­i­cal to have your provider check it out right away. It could be a sign of can­cer, and it’s best to diag­nose it as ear­ly as pos­si­ble, since can­cer found in its ear­li­est stages is eas­i­er to treat. 

If you’re con­cerned about being sick, or have been expe­ri­enc­ing new symp­toms, make an appoint­ment with a Duly Health and Care pri­ma­ry care provider.

3. You Might Give Your­self the Wrong Treat­ment Plan.

The inter­net is full of peo­ple who have seem­ing­ly mag­i­cal reme­dies for ail­ments rang­ing from mos­qui­to bites to COVID-19, or who promise that a dai­ly spoon­ful of hon­ey cures chron­ic headaches. But unless a med­ica­tion is pre­scribed by your provider or an over-the-counter treat­ment has been approved for use by the US Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA), it’s not cer­tain to work — and it could even be dangerous.

For instance, you may have heard that tak­ing aspirin every day pre­vents heart attacks. How­ev­er, tak­ing aspirin dai­ly when it hasn’t been pre­scribed to you increas­es your risk for com­pli­ca­tions like bleed­ing in your stom­ach or your brain.

4. Or You Might Give Your­self the Wrong Well­ness Plan.

Or, you may be tempt­ed to load up on sup­ple­ments like vit­a­mins to boost your over­all health. But cer­tain sup­ple­ments — espe­cial­ly if tak­en in high dos­es or along with oth­er sup­ple­ments — can actu­al­ly be harm­ful. For exam­ple, get­ting too much vit­a­min A can cause liv­er dam­age. Tak­ing vit­a­min C or vit­a­min E sup­ple­ments can reduce the effec­tive­ness of cer­tain can­cer chemother­a­py treatments. 

Your provider may pre­scribe sup­ple­ments if you have a defi­cien­cy but let them make that call. 

Also read, Which Pri­ma­ry Care Doc­tor is best for me?

5. And You Might Be the Vic­tim of Med­ical Misinformation.

This is espe­cial­ly true if you rely on social media for learn­ing about health. 

Recent­ly, the issue of teenagers using Tik Tok for men­tal health infor­ma­tion has tak­en the spot­light. The hash­tag “#men­tal­health” is pop­u­lar on Tik Tok, with videos tagged with the hash­tag accu­mu­lat­ing more than 88 bil­lion views (as of June 2023). Many of the videos are from peo­ple shar­ing their per­son­al expe­ri­ences, and not from health­care pro­fes­sion­als — and these videos are often laden with mis­in­for­ma­tion. Teens are using this infor­ma­tion to make incor­rect self-diag­noses and are even believ­ing Tik Tok influ­encers over their own providers.

Even if you only stick to rep­utable sites with accu­rate infor­ma­tion, like the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC), you could eas­i­ly mis­di­ag­nose or mis­treat your­self. Diag­noses and treat­ments rely on fac­tors like your med­ical his­to­ry, not just a list of symp­toms, and the inter­net doesn’t have the con­text or expe­ri­ence to make an individual’s diagnosis. 

This doesn’t mean the inter­net is always unre­li­able — it’s a great way to read up on a med­ical con­di­tion to get the basics or to con­nect with oth­ers going through some­thing sim­i­lar so that you don’t feel alone. But stick­ing sole­ly to the inter­net rather than vis­it­ing your provider is risky. 

There Is Good News

While it’s impor­tant to avoid self-diag­no­sis and self-treat­ment, it’s also impor­tant to embrace self-aware­ness. You know your body — if some­thing feels wrong or is mak­ing you wor­ried, lis­ten to your instincts and don’t ignore your symptoms. 

And then, call your provider. Not a search engine.