Before you use the Internet to diagnose yourself with another terminal illness -- that you know you don't really have -- check this list to make sure it isn't just a case of cyberchondria (12 Photos)
Gina Roberts-Grey on Mar 1, 2012 at 3:51PM
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Your head hurts so you Google your symptoms. Instead of clicking on the search result that says it could be a migraine, you hone in on the words: "brain tumor," "cancer" and "cerebral hemorrhage."
"Patients coming in with headaches they're convinced are brain tumor is extremely common. Or they'll research symptoms that could be two different things and jump to the most crippling syndrome, even if it's clear they don't have it," says Rahul K. Khare, MD, ER physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and assistant professor at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
Khare says one key symptom of Cyberchondria is that you easily believe you have -- or could have -- these rare disorders without taking into consideration the risk factors, prevalence and incidence of the disease or syndrome.
