How often do you use the Internet to search for health related issues? Chances are that your use has grown incrementally over time and that often the search has to do with self diagnosis.
I recently noticed a kind of "malaise" the day after a hard (for me) workout. It is not necessarily that my muscles were aching but more of a kind "lethargy". Since this pattern was recurring, I did not work workout as often because of the "next day" effect. Turns out that "hypotension (low blood pressure)" is a possible explanation. I found useful information within about 15 minutes time, and some reasonable steps that might help. This problem was no where serious enough for me to see a doctor but sufficiently troublesome enough to impact my "quality of life".
What's the so what? The better quality and authoritative information that we have readily available, the more literate health consumers we become, the more we can practice "preventive health-care", as opposed to fix me I'm broke" health-care. Tom Peter's rants about it here in part one of his talk from Dubai, ripping into the medical community for the pathetic state of the status quo, however, while I agree with Tom that change is required, consumers have to step up to the plate and accept some responsibility. We need to be better informed! Leveraging the "Internets" is a big step in the right direction.
Tags: Health, Health 2.0
Because medical information is ubiquitious and "uncensored" on the internet searching and discovery of internet health related information should be evaluated for reliability. Anyone can put anything out there, so, there is a need to evaluate whether or not the information is accurate.
An excellent source of "quality" medical information is at http://www.medlineplus.gov
Posted by: FLNurse | January 29, 2006 at 06:23 PM