Read the text and choose the correct options to answer the questions.
A few weeks ago, I was feeling under the weather. After days of intensive internet diagnosis, I finally went to see my doctor. After examining me, she told me that my heart rate was a bit fast and sent me off to the laboratory to have some tests. Did I go straight there? Of course not. First, I took out my phone and found out that the medical term for a fast heart rate is "tachycardia". Then I typed this word into one of the search engines. Sadly, the problem with them is that they aren't exactly a comfort in times of crisis. For example, one website immediately scared me with a list of 407 possible causes.
I raced to the hospital, convinced that I probably needed an open-heart surgery. Four hours later, I got a diagnosis. I had a chest infection... and a bad case of cyberchondria*. A survey of one million internet users last year found that 2% of all searches were health-related. Since my trip to hospital, I have been obsessively checking my pulse, swapping symptoms in chatrooms, and reading all about worst-case scenarios. What if the doctors got it wrong? It's very exhausting trying to convince yourself that you might have a life-threatening illness!
The study also revealed another serious problem: online information often doesn't discriminate between common and very rare conditions. One in four of all articles thrown up by an internet search for “headache” suggested a brain tumour as a possible cause. Although it is true that this may be the cause, in fact, brain tumours develop in fewer than one in 50,000 people. People also assume that the first answers that come up in searches refer to the most common causes. However, this is not the case at all.
Another problem for cyberchondriacs is that online medical information may be from an unreliable source or be out of date. A recent study showed that 75% of the people who use the Internet to look up information about their health do not check where that information came from or the date it was created. Once something has been put up on the Internet, even if it's wrong, it's difficult to remove. This is a problem, especially with scare stories, and also with some alternative remedies that claim to be miracle cures but may actually do you harm.
*The word has been derived from the blend of the two words "cyber" and "hypochondria". A cyberchondriac is an individual who compulsively searches the Internet for information about particular real or imagined symptoms of illness.
1. What did the author do after days of internet diagnosis? ...
2. What did the doctor tell the author after examining him? ...
3. What is cyberchondria? ...
4. What percentage of internet searches are health-related? ...
5. What is the problem with online information about health conditions? ...
6. What is the ratio of people who develop brain tumours? ...
7. What is the problem with online medical information sources? ...
8. What percentage of people who use the internet to look up health information check the source? ...
9. What is the problem with some alternative remedies found online? ...