Coming down with something? You might want to think twice before you consult with “Doctor Google.”
We’ve all done it. Something’s not quite right, you’re not feeling well, and you have a question about your health. Instead of asking, say, a doctor or a nurse, what do we do? That’s right, we Google it. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, not 100 percent anyway, but there are some pitfalls to that, and we’ll talk about those on today’s episode.
Welcome back to Plain English. I’m Jeff, JR is the producer. We can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]. Today January 21, 2018 and this is episode 122. That means you can find the transcript with, of course, all the instant translations at PlainEnglish.com/122. Are you new here? Just joined us? Well, in that case, you might not know about the translations we have on the web site. The way it works is, we post a full transcript, word-for-word, every word I say, on the web site. And JR and I highlight about 100 words for each episode, words we think are hard to understand. And we have a team of translators who translate all those hundred words from English to Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, French, and Chinese.
By the way, I hope you liked last Monday’s episode about the movie “Roma.” After I recorded that episode, it won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture. And now some people are speculating that it might be a front-runner for Best Picture at the Oscars later this year. If it wins, it would be the first time a Netflix film wins Best Picture. I have already decided I’m rooting for Roma to be best picture at the Oscars. I think it deserves it. If you missed that episode, check out PlainEnglish.com/120 or just go back in your Spotify or podcast app to find it, just a couple episodes back.
Oh, and did you hear the controversy about the subtitles? The movie is in Spanish, obviously, but the accent and dialect, if you would even call it that, is Mexican. So when Netflix released the film in Spain, they put what they call Iberian Spanish subtitles on there, subtly changing the words wherever there are differences between the way something would be said in Mexico versus in Spain. A somewhat ridiculous example is when they say, “Mamá” in the movie, the subtitles in Spain say “Madre.” The controversy is that it seems like Netflix is saying that Spaniards wouldn’t be able to understand the accent and vocabulary of the Mexican characters. Movies and TV shows from Spain don’t come with special subtitles for Spanish-speaking people in the Americas, for example. Director Alfonso Cuarón says the European subtitles are “parochial” and “offensive to Spaniards themselves.”
Ay, ay, ay. I agree it’s kind of silly, but you do know that subtitles are optional right? You can turn them off. Sheesh!
Careful before you trust ‘Doctor Google’
Let me tell you a quick story. I came down with seasonal allergies in August. Coughing, sneezing, congestion, stuff like that. After a few weeks, I went to the doctor and he confirmed what I suspected—it was just allergies. He suggested some medication, and I took it, life goes on. But then after a few weeks, I was still coughing—no other symptoms. But I mean, coughing a lot. I didn’t want to go back to the doctor so I just kind of hoped it would go away.
So another week or two later, I’m walking from my car into a baseball game, and I start feeling chest pains. Chest pains, okay, could be serious, right? Do I have a punctured lung? Am I having a heart attack? I’m a little young to have a heart attack, but who knows. So, what do I do? Well I do the typical male thing: I pull out my phone and I start Googling potential reasons for chest pains.
There’s a phrase for that: I consulted “Doctor Google.” And there are some pros and cons of consulting with Doctor Google. Pros and cons are good things and bad things. What are some bad things about consulting Doctor Google? For one thing, you might misdiagnose yourself. One minute you might just have a bit of a sore throat; the next minute, you might be convinced you’re dying of cancer. And it’s true that if you have throat cancer, then a sore throat is one of the symptoms (I imagine). But the majority of the time, it’s not, and the more time you spend going down the rabbit hole of page after page on symptoms, the more likely you are to misdiagnose yourself.
One reason for that is that you’ll click on things that rank high in Google search results. But those search results are based on clicks and page rankings, not based on any medical probabilities. So you might see a lot of pages about something terrible, whereas the most common thing is not too bad after all. However, the other side of that coin is that you might have something serious but convince yourself that it’s not too bad.
The second risk is that you’re looking at downright false information. We all joke that not everything on the internet is true, but at least in medicine, there are a lot of things that sound true, that are believable, but are nonetheless not true at all. Or they’re misleading. The media report on studies all the time, but they often are just the ones that grab the headlines. Don’t even get me started on the people out there selling pills and supplements and things: they’ll make anything up just to sell you some useless supplement.
So if you Google your symptoms, you might be looking at bad information, misleading information; you might misinterpret what’s going on; you might cause yourself to worry unnecessarily about the scary disease that happened to show up at the top of the search results. But are there any good reasons to make an impromptu appointment with Doctor Google?
There actually are. I found a good article that talks about the reasons why it can be beneficial to research your symptoms. A recent study from Australia said that 40 percent of people who Googled their symptoms experienced increased anxiety—that means they became more worried than when they started. But 77 percent said it had a positive influence on their interaction with their doctor. So to me that sounds like you can have a better, more informed conversation with your doctor when you actually make an appointment.
The key, some doctors said, is to tell your doctor during your visit what your symptoms are, what you read, and what your questions are. Don’t trust Google to solve all your problems, but you can prepare a little bit before your conversation. Doctors don’t love it when patients come in thinking they know better than the doctor does—but they do like patients that are well-informed and are prepared to communicate well.
Okay, so what happened to me in the parking lot of Miller Park? What I found in Google was that chest pains are actually a symptom of bronchitis. Bronchitis is when you just keep coughing weeks after you get a cold or have allergies. The pain is actually muscle pain in your chest. That made total sense in the context of all my symptoms. I wasn’t having a heart attack. I didn’t have a punctured lung. I just had bronchitis. What I should have done is seen a doctor the next day—but of course I didn’t do that. I just waited for the symptoms to go away. Some things never change, right?
I want to say hi to a couple of listeners today. Sedef is listening from Istanbul. He joined us here about three months ago, and has been listening to one or even two old episodes a day, and now he’s finally caught up. Yasin is also from Istanbul. He’s been listening since January 1, 2018. I said eighteen! A year he’s been with us. Thanks Yasin. Two listeners from Istanbul, a beautiful city. It’s got an old town side, with the mosques and the old spice market, and a new side, with the more modern shopping on the Istiklal and restaurants and such. There’s a bridge between the two sides; it’s two levels. On the bottom level of the bridge you have restaurants with beautiful river views. On the top level are the cars, and these guys fishing off the side. It’s pretty cool. And we have a lot of listeners in Turkey, which is great.
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