Today I'm sick, and it is the one thing on my mind, so let's talk about health and the Internet. I don't mean "don't 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 system. No, I mean the specific intersection of the Internet as well as 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 actually two diseases that are discussed quite a bit online, however which you'll never hear diagnosed by a doctor nor read about in the medical journal. Actually, you may seem them discussed in the medical journal, however only for the purpose of debunking them: neither of these diseases are real.
Each "Wilson's temperature fatigue" and "adrenal fatigue" can be terms applied to general collections of vague symptoms, any of which you can chalk up to everyday activities experienced by 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. Wilson's 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's not covered by any manner of insurance.
Just because these diseases don't really exist doesn't mean that people necessarily accept that as fact. Try telling absolutely everyone in the pro-"adrenal fatigue" community that their disease is fake and you'll 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 either simple and unfortunate. These types of people start out feeling pretty poorly and aren't 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 there's a whole community of folks just like them, all with 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. Absolutely everyone 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, however they're the only ones that have roughly zero basis in medical science. One other syndrome that's commonly self-diagnosed online is Asperger's syndrome, which is characterized primarily by difficulty in social interaction and obsession with specific interests to the exclusion of others. While many of those self-diagnosing on the Internet as Asperger's sufferers have legitimate claims, many others claim the syndrome without any evidence save for social awkwardness. Unfortunately for legitimate Asperger's sufferers, these kinds of false claimants would rather have something to blame for their poor ability to socially interact; after all, if it's a medical condition it can't 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 contain a nugget of truth under a mountain of Internet self-diagnosis. This really 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 that if you do not feel well and you think it can be more serious than your average cold or whatnot, go and see your doctor and if you don't agree with what he says then get your second opinion from another doctor. Just do not rely on online sources when you can deal with trained professionals.
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