There are all sorts of sayings which indicate that when you are not feeling well, you should go to the doctor. For example, how many times have you heard the expression that someone who diagnosis himself has a fool for a doctor. But, nowadays, there is no need to diagnose yourself, you can go to the doctor on the net – for free.
Today’s generation is preoccupied with health and that is probably one of the reasons that there are so many health related websites on the internet. Each disease has more than one site and new diseases are being discovered, popularized and written about every day (for example, you could take celiac disease (http://www.celiac.org/).
If you think you have a psychological problem, go visit Web4Health where you can find answers to more than 1000 questions about psychology, mental health and relationships, written by a team of experts appointed by the Commission of the European Communities.
*But there are more general sites available where you can actually have doctors analyze your symptoms. One such site is Askthedoctor.com where people from all over ask questions about everything. In the week this article was written there were articles inquiring about adult acne, bone scans for undiagnosed back pain and treatment options for external hemorrhoids, just to name a few.
*At just ask medical.com you have to sign in to join. This site is available 24 hours a day and contains a database of over one million medical questions. It also has a section for FAQs with all sorts of questions from indigestion to finding out if you have cancer.
*At Healthline you can find all sorts of health info including videos, symptom searches, treatments, drugs and doctor searches. This site sees its mission as “delivering rich, contextually relevant health information to help…customers make better decisions.”
Healthline claims a terminology database of over one million medical terms as well as approximately 250,000 medical concepts including diseases, conditions, causes, symptoms, diagnoses, treatments and other medically relevant attributes. This site asserts that it is the one that doctors proscribe the most.
*MedicineNet, Inc. is an online, healthcare media publishing company which has been providing “easy-to-read, in-depth, authoritative medical information for consumers” through its website since 1996. The site allows you the option of choose slideshows, diseases and conditions, symptoms and signs, medications, etc. Its articles are all written by doctors in easy to understand language. It is run by a network of over 70 U.S. board certified physicians.
*WebMD is an organization that provides medical information and reference materials on health subjects including an up-to-date medical reference content database.
So even if you are a firm believer that there is no substitute for going to a doctor, it is clear that free medical advice on the internet is here to stay and there is no reason why you shouldn’t check out a disease that you think you may have and learn as much as you can about it.
