You are not a medical doctor. You do not know anything about symptoms and diagnosis. You are just a person trying to figure out what could be wrong with your body. You listen to your body and you feel like there is something seriously wrong. You are scared. You feel bad. You want to call for help. You reach for your phone but before you make the call, you realize, you have help on your hand. You may not be a doctor, but you have doctor google on your hand. You type online symptom checker and a list of websites come up to your rescue. You click one of the sites and start typing your symptoms.
Now, who should you believe? Do you still listen to your body or do you trust online symptom checker?I am here to tell you why you should listen to your body over the online symptom checker in one of those situations. Here are the 5 reasons why you should trust listening to your body over the online symptom checker:
- When you listen to your body properly, you can sense internal danger: What you believe to be your hunch could be your body detecting stress signal from your organs. You feel things because your brain senses something. When any of your internal organs are in danger, they try to communicate that to your brain. You may not have any concrete symptoms for the computer to analyze but you can feel the danger. You may not have any medical knowledge but your brain knows your body. If you suddenly feel sick and have a hunch that something is seriously wrong, please listen to your body and call for help. Do not let online symptom checker distract you.
- When you feel very sick, you are very sick. Many times, the kind of things you feel when you are sick is hard to describe in words. Online symptom check can only analyze things that you can input as words describing your symptom.
- You know your body very well. You know who you are and how much it takes to wear you out. You get the feeling when something changes rapidly and you feel it when something is off. Only you have the ability to feel how any new symptom is different or unusual for you. When you feel something unusual or different, you may get a hunch that something is seriously wrong. Please follow that hunch. Online symptom checkers do not know how you normally feel and they can not analyze your symptoms based on your baseline.
- When you feel very sick, you look very sick. How you appear has a big significance to your doctor when your doctor examines you in person. Even when the symptoms you are able to describe do not suggest any dangerous diagnosis, your doctor gets concerned when you look sick. Unfortunately, online symptom checkers cannot see how you look. When you feel very sick, ignore the online symptom checker and listen to your body and seek help.
- Do not ever think, say or believe, “Well, what do I know? I am not the doctor.” That is a very wrong way to think about your symptoms when you are sick. Think, “It is my body. It is trying to tell me something and I should listen to my body” Your doctor or the database in the online symptom checker may have the medical knowledge to logically analyze your symptoms but they cannot know how you are feeling. You know something is wrong because you feel it. You feel it because your body is telling you it is in danger. Do yourself a favor and please listen to your body.