Editor’s Note: In this insightful talk, former WebMD chief medical officer Dr. John Whyte explores why searching for health symptoms online often leads to confusion rather than clarity. He offers practical advice on how to navigate the overwhelming amount of medical information available, emphasizing the importance of checking credentials and maintaining trust in human expertise. (Recorded at TEDxNashville on October 19, 2025).
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
We All Search for Health Symptoms Online
DR. JOHN WHYTE: How many of you have felt like that, right? It’s human nature. We all have searched for symptoms that we might be having. Maybe it’s a mole on our skin, a cough that we’re experiencing, or a headache. And what happens? After 10 minutes, we don’t become more clear on what we might be having. We’re more confused and more concerned.
So we’re talking about joy, but then how can we have joy? And we’re searching about our health, and we’re having some of these challenges. As I said, we all do it. I used to come out and ask people, how many of you have searched health conditions online? Now I say, how many of you have searched for health issues today?
Because I want to share a statistic with you. A billion, a billion, nine zeros. That’s how many searches on health there are every single day. And it’s actually going up. And when you put it into context, how many is that every hour, every minute?
Better Information Should Lead to Better Health
Up until recently, I was the chief medical officer at WebMD, and many of you likely ended up at WebMD. And at WebMD, the motto is, “Better information leads to better health.” And as a physician, I firmly believe that. I want you to become informed. I want you to become empowered. But the challenge is, information isn’t knowledge.
Remember the phrase, TMI? Do people still say that? Too much information? Typically, we would say it about what? We’d say it about someone giving you too much personal information. It makes you feel awkward, maybe a little anxious. Well, TMI also is around health. Too much information, when you’re searching for your symptoms, actually can create anxiety, can actually be dangerous.
The Danger of Too Much Information: Mary’s Story
So I saw a patient two years ago, true story. I’m going to call her Mary. That wasn’t actually her name. But Mary came in because she had what’s called cerumen impaction. Anyone ever hear that? Basically means your ear’s clogged with wax. It’s very common.
Now, Mary had searched it online, and she saw, rightfully, that hearing loss can lead to dementia. So she was very concerned that she was having decreased hearing, even though it was only for a day, very concerned about it. She also read that too much earwax could be signs of infection, which I’ll tell you that’s not the truth. But she was very focused on getting the wax out of her ear.
So she had read that hydrogen peroxide is actually pretty good if you mix it equally with water. But what she did was she microwaved it. And then she put it in her ear. And obviously she came into the office because she had a burned ear canal, very red, very irritated. And I said to her, “Mary, why?” And maybe I shouldn’t have said it like that, but that exactly is how I said it. “Why?” And she said, “I read it online. And I thought it wouldn’t hurt.” But it did. And that’s the challenge.
From Hypochondriac to Cyberchondriac
Remember the phrase hypochondriac? People that have symptoms and every symptom is always the most serious. Well, now we have this phrase, you might have heard it, cyberchondriac, right? You go online. I always feel cyberchondriacs should be like crime solvers because they look at every detail, everything is magnified, and it’s always the worst case scenario.
My 12-year-old is a little bit of a cyberchondriac. So the summer he had a bit of a blister on his foot because he needed these Kobe cleats that were too big for him, but he insisted he needed them, and he developed a blister. It wasn’t healing after a couple of days, it started to look a little infectious, and my wife took him to urgent care. They cultured it, they gave him an antibiotic, they came home that evening and I said, “How did it go?” And he says to me, “It could be MRSA.”
And I thought that’s pretty clever for a 12 year old but MRSA is still kind of unusual and he said this antibiotic doesn’t cover it and he was right in terms of the information that he found. Now the next day I get a call from the doctor’s office. It’s MRSA. And I think how am I going to tell him that? But it was and he did need to have the antibiotic changed and my point is sometimes the information you search is correct, often it is, but you have to put it into context.
Now just to be fair, my wife had some knee pain just last week after starting back up at the gym and he goes over to her and he says, “Could be jumper’s knee, which is a patellar tendonitis.” It’s not. It’s just she just started to work out. So now her knee is bothering her. But I get it. These are powerful tools in terms of generative AI and ChatGPT and Google, but they don’t know your history. They can’t do a physical exam and in many ways they’re causing more confusion.
Clarity vs. Confusion: The Real Challenge of Searching Health Information
What I talk about is it’s really the issue of clarity versus confusion. And if you want to have joy, if you want to use symptom checkers and the web and AI to understand your health better and I want you to become more empowered, it is about having clarity versus confusion.