Information overload may be making some Americans sick

Insight on the News, Sept 15, 1997 by Jennifer Harper

Informed self-care is an institution -- TV, cable, radio and the Internet are flooded with health tips. Ten percent of patients in a doctor's office may be preoccupied with an illness they've discovered through the media. Some say that in our haste to build a risk-free society, Americans instead have a `notion of trembling hypochondriacs.'

We are not exactly a nation of hypochondriacs. But we're close. Americans are overdosing on health and medicine -- the endless and pervasive media parade of trendy cures, hair-raising symptoms and obscure viruses. Sometimes it gets the best of us.

Over on the magazine rack, there's Health, along with Men's Health, Prime Health, Natural Health, Alternative Health, Healthy Living, Natural Remedies, Doctor's Forum, Health & Beauty and Body & Spirit among others. Bookstores are awash with medical offerings, from professional bibles such as the Physician's Desk Reference to Sinus Survival, The Foot Book and Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired

Let's not forget health-as-entertainment on TV, cable and talk radio. The Internet offers thousands of medical World Wide Web sites from universities, professional associations, self-help groups, hospitals and just plain quacks.

"Excessive information is confusing and worrisome" says Rudolf HoehnSaric, director of the anxiety disorders clinic at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. "It is not always easy to distinguish what is important from what is no."

A troublesome preoccupation with one's health gets complicated. "Normally, people take in health information because they are interested," says Hoehn-Saric. "Then they accept what they are comfortable with and dismiss the rest."

Things go awry when the worry factor takes over and behavior changes. According to Phantom Illness, a new book about hypochondria by Carla Cantor, up to 10 percent of patients in a doctor's office may be preoccupied with an illness they've discovered on TV or in the newspaper. They reject assurances that they are fine and constantly check their bodies for peculiarities.

Hoehn-Saric says some folks can be predisposed to worry if they watched the demise of a loved one from disease. Or they "learn" the behavior from someone else, such as a mother who constantly takes her pulse or memorizes symptoms. "If they have a panic disorder or other condition," adds Hoehn-Saric, "they will search for some underlying physical problem to blame it on."

Some believe social trends are to blame. In The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement, author Robert Samuelson argues that Americans have tried to build a risk-free society but instead have created a "nation of trembling hypochondriacs."

Others cite 1970s feminism, when landmark books such as Our Bodies, Ourselves urged women to take part in their medical destinies. The idea has taken hold. A recent CNN survey showed that women visit the doctor three times as much as men.

"It's good to be an empowered medical consumer," says Tom Ferguson, a physician in Austin, Texas, who has written a book about medicine in cyberspace and is an advocate of informed self-care. "There has been an explosion of medical information in the past five years. But there is a difference between what's presented for mass culture and what's part of the real medical community."

The health environment is constantly evolving, and health information -- particularly on the Internet -- has become a "niche" culture rather than a mass culture, says Ferguson. The public is learning to make choices about what they will, and will not, pay attention to.

"Here's the good news," says Ferguson. "When we access data, we can also access people and a support community. There's a real chance to create a meaningful link with someone."

For Consumers, More Is Better

Petunia or English rose? Candy floss or raspberry ice? These are among the 70 plus shades of pink offered by Sears in its paint department.

"Consumers are drowning in choices, because we have a culture centered around choices," says Audrey Gaskey, a consumer-marketing expert at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. "Manufacturers introduce new versions of old favorites the way Hollywood puts out sequels to blockbuster movies'"

Jelly beans, cat litter, condiments, household cleaners, cosmetics -- there seems to be no end to spinoffs and variations. Waldenbooks, for example, carries 50 different Bibles aimed at men, women, ethnic groups, families and even skeptics. It also stocks an additional 58 versions for children, including Baby's First Bible, which has a little yellow handle, and The New Adventure Bible, copiously illustrated.

Culinary entrepreneurs introduced more than 40,000 new products this summer at the Fancy Food Show in New York, including 770 kinds of olive oils, 920 mustards, 732 salsas and 504 biscotti. "It's invaluable," exudes Giorgio DeLuca, who founded the posh Dean & DeLuca food suppliers. "I still find new jewels' "

Perfumes and fragrances are a $5 billion-a-year industry, according to the Fragrance Foundation in New York. Some member of the average household purchases a new perfume or Fragrance Foundation in every 83 days. Garden Botanika, a nationwide chain of natural fragrance shops, features 66 different scents based on flowers, plants, food and exotic woods.