So it's off to the GP, who diagnoses low white and red blood cells, cause unknown.  To rule out major illness, he has schedule months of tests with everyone from internists to blood docs.

Did they honestly expect you to wait for all that? You press "on" and "Connect."  A mouse click here, a keystroke there and presto! The tingly relief of an instantaneous result.

Then panic.  It turns out your beau suffers from gastrointestinal bleeding.  Or maybe myelofibrosis, overproduction of scar tissue inside the bone marrow. No, it's myelodysplastic syndrome, a slow-progressing type of leukemia.

That's the least of your problems.  You have joined in the growing ranks of the pathologically wired.  You are a cyberchondriac.  Surveys around the globe say more and more of us are obsessively perusing the Internet in search of what it is -- real or imagined -- that ails us. 

In its Cyberchondriacs Update last May, Harris interactive noted that 110 million Americans are logging on to sites like Web-MD and MedLINEplus at least three times a month in search of health information, about double the numbers from 1998.

The affliction also affects millions of Canadians. Europeans and South Americans, according to Swiss- based Health on the Net Foundation.

Cyberchondriacs are younger, better educated and more affluent than the general population.  And most trust what the virtual doctor says.  In one Australian study, 89 per cent of physicians said their patients seek online advice before going to appointments.

The increasing popularity of Internet health portals is a wake-up call for physicians, says Dr. France Legare, a family physician and assistant professor at Laval University in Quebec City. 

"Physicians are getting the message from Canadians that they want to be actively involved in making decisions that are important for their health," says Legare, who is writing a PhD thesis on the subject.  "The Web is just another tool for people to get information."

A tempting, soothing siren.  At an online chat group for multiple sclerosis patients, "Tisha" says she, too, started getting heart palpitations -- and a stiff neck, muscle spasms and tension headaches -- shortly after she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease. 

"The more time I spent reading about all the other diseases I could have and obsessing on every little ache or pain, the more spasms, headaches and palpitations I had," she continues.  "I would read about symptoms of Lyme (disease) or lupus and suddenly feel like I had every one."

Or she would diagnose others. But the quality of the Net's 100,000-plus medical Web sites varies considerably.  And people may be vulnerable to physical, emotional and financial harm because of irrelevant or inaccurate information, or because they misunderstand valid advice found online.

Despite the risk, Legare calls online medical searches "a very good thing" before visiting the doctor -- if you search the right sites.  She works with a team at Laval University that runs http://www.medecine.quebec.qc.ca/english.repetoire.htm which compiles a list of the Web's hundred or so "best" health sites.

Then there's the Canadian Cochrane Network and Center, a McMaster University-based project that is part of an international effort called the Cochrane Collaboration: Some 6,000 volunteers scan journal articles to find the most effective and up-to-date treatments for disease. Their summaries are posted at http://cochrane.mcmaster.ca.

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