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Health & Medical Information

by Pat Kendall, Ph.D., R.D.
Food Science and Human Nutrition Specialist

The Internet opens a whole new doorway to nutrition, health and medical information. Used wisely, it can provide great resources: background information on diseases, abstracts on clinical trials, recommendations on diets and supplements. The amount of information available is phenomenal. You can find hundreds of Web sits on almost any medical topic.

Unfortunately, not all sites are reliable. Many are there just to make a buck, sometimes at any price. How can you tell the experts from the charlatans, the credible sites from the incredible ones? There is no easy way.

Setting up a Web site is easy and cheap. Just about anybody can sell anything or claim anything on the Web. There's no peer review, no guarentee that what you're reading is accurate and up-to-date. There is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), but both its budget and its authority are quite limited. The FTC can't shut unscrupulous sites down, only force them to stop making unfounded claims. For every site they go after, five more seem to take its place.

This said, the Web is an excellent place to find out about nutrition, health and disease. Here are some practical tips to help you navigate your way through the Internet.

  • Don't trust products that claim to cure everything. And don't trust the sites that sell them.
  • Be wary of testimonials and anecdotes. Anyone can make up a story.
  • Be suspicious of "medicalese" statements and unfamiliar words that disguise a lack of real information. Scientific words like "colloids," enzymes" and "antioxidants" may or may not mean anything. Beware of words like "breakthrough," "secret ingredients," "miracle cure" and "ancient remedy."
  • Get a second opinion on what you find on the Web. Check the information with that found in a standard reference book. Share your findings with your health care professional. Use what you find as a basis for questions.
  • Avoid working with any "Internet" doctor that doesn't have your medical records or hasn't met you personally. If you use Internet doctors, use them as sources of information, not prescriptions.
  • Pass up cyber-salesman who claim that the govenment, medical professional and scientific mainstream are in cahoots to suppress their products, or that doctors don't really want to cure cancer, heart disease, the common cold, etc.
  • If you have prescriptions filled online, have your own physician do the prescribing, not some cyber-pharmacist who doesn't know your health history. Also, don't assume that the price online is always cheaper. Some sites charge more than regular pharmacies.

With a little common sense, cyberspace and health can be a good match. Here are some Web sites with reliable information:

 

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