Nottingham’s most-Googled medical symptoms revealed

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Insomnia, diarrhoea and a sore throat are among the top illnesses that get people in Nottingham turning to the internet for self-diagnoses.

A new study by an online prescription service found insomnia was the most searched term in the city, with 480 searches on average each month.

The sleeping disorder was also the most searched-for health term in the UK overall and for nine out of ten cities included in the survey.

Searches for diarrhoea reached 320 per month, closely followed by a sore throat which peaks at 260.

Pharmacy2U’s research findings for Nottingham

The findings were published by Pharmacy2U, which analysed more than 400,000 online searches.

Spokesman Phil Day said: “The public’s reluctance to visit a GP or Doctor when feeling under the weather is apparent and has resulted in a phenomenon of online searches.”

The tendency for people to type their ailments into the search engine in the hope of a quick diagnosis is known as “cyberchrondria.”

Academics have previously identified it as an emerging threat to mental health.

Writing in the British Medical Journal last April, Professor Peter Tyrer, of Imperial College, said: “An explanation is the increased pathologisation of our society combined with internet browsing, appropriately called cyberchondria.”

In 2006, another health study from north Nottinghamshire found that 12 per cent of patients who attending various hospital clinics experience excessive health anxiety.

Only four years later, in the same clinics, this had risen to 20 per cent.

Professor Tyrer believes that the internet can be of great value for those seeking to know the cause of medical symptoms but he says it is a menace for those with health anxiety.

He said: “People with health anxiety pay selective attention to the most serious explanation of symptoms, even though these may be very uncommon.”

He added: “So to say to people with health anxiety that their chances of having a particular disease is only 1 in 1000 is of little benefit.”

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