Health and Medical Information on the Internet

By Earl Hunsinger

Do you hate going to the doctor? With the rising cost of health care, many people put off regular medical check ups. Even when they're sick, some may view going to the doctor as a last resort, only to be considered if there is a real chance that they will die otherwise. However you personally feel about hospitals and visits to the doctor, knowing something about health and medicine is in your best interest.

Actually, it's only been in fairly recent times that people have been so quick to run to the doctor for every little ache or pain. During the Middle Ages, professional medical treatment was available mainly to the wealthy and doctors practiced primarily in urban areas and around royal courts. Poorer people living in rural areas or small villages usually had to fend for themselves. Ailments would be treated with home remedies, some of which were more effective than what any medical professional of the time would have prescribed (after all, this was the age of bloodletting).

Today, medical care has improved in quality, consistency, and availability. The cost, of course, has remained high. With man's increased understanding of disease and other health related topics has come as an increase in the accessibility of information on these subjects. This is especially true in light of the increasingly widespread proliferation and use of the Internet. In the past, whether you lived or died from an illness might have depended on where you lived, who you knew, or how much money you had. Now, if the Internet is available to you, two of these are no longer an issue.

The Internet contains numerous websites dealing with health and medicine. Many of these contain articles covering diseases, conditions, and general health topics. You'll find a wealth of information on fitness, diet, and the prevention of illness. Some, such as the site WebMD, even provide a symptom checker. After answering a short series of questions, and pointing to an area of the body, the site presents a list of possible causes for your problem.

Other websites provide information on non-traditional and preventive treatment options, such as herbal supplements. Of course, it's important to remember the rule of caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware. This is always true with the Internet, even more than for printed media. The act of putting it in writing doesn't make it true. Caution is especially needed when the website that you're visiting is trying to sell you something, such as herbal supplements. Of course, with thousands (sometimes millions) of sites devoted to any given medical, health, fitness, diet, or herbal supplement subject, it should be possible to check an unbiased source.

While it's handy to have medical references online, and all of us could probably benefit from educating ourselves about our own health, such online resources should normally be viewed as supplements, rather than as substitutes for professional medical care. For minor ailments, they might allow us to decide whether a trip to the doctor is really necessary. For more serious problems, they allow us to gain a better understanding of our doctor's diagnosis and play a more active role in our own treatment program.

Have you ever wondered about the effectiveness (or side effects) of the medicine that your doctor prescribes? There are even websites that provide this information.

We live in an age when medical treatment is readily available. As a result, some run to the doctor for every little ache and pain. Others go to the other extreme and can only be dragged to the doctor after they become too weak to fight back. How often we seek professional medical help is a personal decision. Yet, it's nice to know that, through the Internet, we have access to resources that can take some of the mystery out of the process.