They say that technology has made life easier, faster, more comfortable, and on and on and on. Who this “they” is, I don’t know. While technology has made certain parts of life these things (easier, faster, more comfortable, etc.), it has also made it more difficult to discern good information from bad.
Take, for example, websites that help people self-diagnose. The running joke about WebMD is that, no matter what symptoms you search, the results always point to something very serious, like cancer.
A website for a New Delhi network has put up 15 symptoms that people commonly complain of, along with what kind of cancer is associated with each symptom.
The list covers such innocuous symptoms as coughing, heartburn, and fever, all the way up to serious symptoms, such as blood in the urine and lumps in the breasts or testicles. While it is true that all of these could be signals from your body that cancer is growing, they could just as easily be something that is not too serious.
The article was meant to make people more aware of how serious relatively minor symptoms could be. And that, certainly, is good advice: By all means, do NOT ignore your symptoms. But the best medical advice is the easiest medical advice to follow: Be smart. Know your body. See your doctor regularly. Communicate openly with him/her. Trust him/her and follow his/her advice.
