"Med Student" Syndrome

Hi! Just wanted to start a thread about the "Med Student" Syndrome. For those of you that don't know what it is, it's how whenever you read something about medical information you start thinking you are experience those symptoms and sometimes do in fact start experiencing them.

What I was really wonder was, has anyone experienced this? Does anyone not believe it? What are your opinions?

~Bella

I definitely believe in it, and I've experienced a mild case of its newest variety, which is WebMD Syndrome

Seriously, there have been a couple times when I've looked online for information about something like a sinus infection and ended up reading the entire section of the Merck Manual that deals with brain abcesses because when I did a search for one of my symptoms that article came up. So far I've managed to keep my head on straight and not run to the ER for the sniffles.

I knew a guy in college who woke up one morning with a terrible headache and neckache and checked the Merck Manual Home Edition they had in the house. He diagnosed himself with spinal meningitis and went to the hospital in a panic. The doctors there kindly pointed out that since he'd been out drinking heavily the night before, it was more likely a hangover

It's definitely real, and it's usually the worst case scenarios that get to you.
If anything, it makes you believe that your mind can certainly affect the health of your body, for worse, and for better.

i diagnose myself all the time. my most recent diagnosis is huntingtons chorea.

reply to post by thing fish

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I diagnose myself too. I definitely am a hypochondriac (sp?). Reading stuff online or anywhere just makes it worse for people like me. It's like reading Nostradamus. People read it and think this story is about blah...and that one is about blah, etc. I don't see how reading some stories and comparing to things that happened later in history equals a predicition. Where are the predictions right now for the future? It's like "This is about the Kennedy's being shot...and ths is about 9/11 and this is about Hitler....bla blah blah." Tell me what is going to happen in the future from today. Not the crap that Nostradamus "predicted" for the future going forward from when he lived.

Why didn't someone read that book before the Kennedy assassinations and keep them from happening? Why didn't someone stop Hitler before he went mad and had millions of Jews and others killed? Why didn't someone keep those planes from hitting the towers on 9/11? Basically, you can get whatever you want out of what you read. Nostradamus wrote alot of Quatrains or whatever and it's easy to find historical events to compare them to. DAH.

But sorry...I went off on a tangent. If I think I have something and then read about it, I can easily start noticing all the symptoms I have. I start wanting to get my crap in order for the wife when I'm gone.

Examples:

I have had diarrea for two weeks. I do some reading and think I have Chrone's Disease
I start having odd arm pit odor. I must have liver or kidney disease.
I have a headache. That might be a tumor.
Chest pain. Clogged aorta or ventrical or whatever. A sign of my impending heart attack.
I have had a "mass" on my left arm near the elbow for longer than I can remember. That might actually be something. It's like a clump of flesh under my skin or a lump on a muscle. Been there forever. Could be a growth waiting to TAKE OFF and attack my whole body.
I want to kill my neighbors. I'm some sort of sociopath.
Things are going really well. Something bad must be going to happen soon.

It never ends.








[edit on 6-12-2008 by Excitable_Boy]

I'm definitely familiar with this form of hypochondria. haha...

I'm not a med student but I do like to look through medical texts and websites and have been completely convinced I was suffering from this or that ailment many times over. I read a symptom, then I seem to find it manifesting.

It's so silly, but the mind works how it works, right?