In this article:
Where to start
Where to zero in on a disease
Where to learn to live well
Red flags on health sites
A checklist for trustworthiness
On the Internet, find specifics.

The Web makes housecalls

From simple first-aid advice to cutting-edge medical research, info on the Internet can offer comfort, consultation and possibly even a cure. USA WEEKEND's guide to Health Online provides a promising prognosis of finding what you need.

At 22, Kathryn Carney was diagnosed with an "incurable" syndrome that creates new ovarian cysts each month. By 26, Carney had been to eight doctors, weighed 240 and was so sick that she had to quit work. That's when she turned to the Internet. She dug up European studies online and used them to persuade doctors to prescribe a drug usually used to treat prostate cancer. She joined online support groups. An e-mail service sent her motivational quotes daily. Carney lost 90 pounds in 14 months and today shows no signs of illness.

"The Internet is still my support system," enthuses the now 30-year-old host of Home & Garden Television's Vacation Living. Such is the potential of health on the Web, "the most significant advance since the printing press," says George Lundberg, the respected former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, now editor in chief at CBS' healthwatch.medscape.com.

This year, the number of people logging on for the health of it will explode 70% to 33.5 million, says Cyber Dialogue, a research firm. Health sites like drkoop.com and WebMD.com get nearly 3 million visits per month, more "eyeballs" than popular magazines like Vanity Fair have in subscribers.

Thanks to the Internet, patients come to doctors with better information and questions. They participate more actively in health care decisions. Online support groups and message boards quickly spread new treatment options. Online health even is spawning a new vocabulary -- words like "cyberhealing" andÊ"cyberchondriac." There's information for all, whether you are new to the Internet, ready to zero in on a deadly disease or seeking tips for a long, healthful life.

But dipping into the Web's 25,000 health sites can end up feeling like a trans-Atlantic swim. Type "headaches" into a search engine like Altavista, and more than 108,000 unregulated pages pop up, including ads.

In this environment it's easy to be hurt, warns John H. Renner, M.D., president of the National Council for Reliable Health Information. "Accurate information is empowering," he says, but "the inaccurate stuff is so serious that even government agencies are referring to some of it as 'deadly.' "

Not all sites will last -- even popular drkoop.com's future was "code blue" at press time. Still, the Internet is expected to become the heart of consumer health -- our place to store, send and access patient records and test results. "I can imagine a time when the doctor can see you or access instruments about the body to do physical testing online," predicts Tom Ferguson, M.D., author of The Ferguson Report, the industry newsletter of online health. "If you had told somebody in 1993 what we could do today on the Internet, they never would have believed it."

This is your guide to the future.

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Where to start

Use search engines you can't miss

Health information is available from the moment you log on. Many Internet service providers, like America Online (AOL) and Microsoft Network (MSN), and portals Yahoo!, Infoseek and Excite have elaborate health categories with search engines, links, chats and message boards. They lure eyeballs with special events: When AOL put colds and flu info on a special site, viewership increased 700%.

Cruise the big, flashy sites

The big kahuna health sites can be fun and informative but are limited -- or slanted -- due to commerical sponsorships by drug makers and other special interests. In some ways, it's hard to tell the difference among big commercial health sites. Most have:

• a news section
• a library with reference books, frequently asked questions (FAQs),
• health articles
• communities of interest that chat or post messages
• an "ask the expert" section
• "tools" to track your own health or a child's
• e-mail newsletters

Notable biggies:
drkoop.com    webmd.com    onhealth.com    thriveonline.com    achoo.com intelihealth.com    healthcentral.com    HealthAtoZ.com    mayohealth.org discoveryhealth.com    healthwatch.medscape.com

Work the non-commercial gateways

healthfinder.com Don't let the fact that this site is from the U.S. government turn you away. Surprisingly user-friendly, healthfinder categories range from medical journals to infant, child, teen, men, women and minority health. It's considered a top search engine for health with links to online publications, clearinghouses, databases, Web sites, support and self-help groups. For a guide to making decisions about lifestyles, health care and insurance, click on one of the four "smart choices" sections.

chid.nih.gov Want to find articles on any health topic? CHID (Combined Health Information Database), a bibliographic database produced by health agencies of the U.S. government, is a small, no- nonsense search engine that gives big results.

www.medmatrix.org Its categories may seem dry (the site is, after all, meant for clinicians), but Medical Matrix is a gold mine. Not only does it link to hundreds of Internet health sites on even obscure topics, but the editors at Medical Matrix rank sites with one to five stars. Make sure to visit "Patient Education," with rated links to many top general medical information sites.

noah.cuny.edu An outstanding bilingual site (all information is available in Spanish), it offers frequent updates and links to newsletters. Use the "Word Search" feature, where even simple terms bring up a wealth of health information.

Where to zero in on a disease

Let an association explain it to you

Among the most reliable (read: most conservative) sites for researching an illness are pages maintained by major foundations and non-profits. Web sites of the American Cancer Society cancer.org, American Heart Association americanheart.org, American Diabetes Association diabetes.org, and Arthritis National Research Foundation www.curearthritis.org have reliable links. Similar groups can be found easily through Web portals like Yahoo! or Infoseek.

Try specific disease sites

oncolink.com This site from the University of Pennsylvania wins awards for a reason: It is thorough, easy-to-use, up-to-date and a great place to get a grip on cancer. Besides the expected disease descriptions and FAQs, it has personal stories and hard-to-find help on handling cancer's financial burdens and side effects (fatigue, pain).

yoursurgery.com Not for the weak of stomach (there are photos of actual internal organs/surgery), but anyone facing the knife for hip replacement, Cesarean section, tonsillectomy or 30 other common procedures should check this out. It lists symptoms, complications, post-op care and options besides surgery. Surgeons and patients use this site as part of the legal informed consent process.

mediconsult.com Handy for information on any chronic condition, like diabetes, arthritis or lupus, this site also divides information into categories for women, men, seniors, children and caregivers. All information passes a rigorous clinical review process before being displayed.

www.cdc.gov Think CDC, and you might think ebola or flu stats. But this diverse and informative site has everything public health, from back belts and how the use of baby bottles affects tooth decay to wintertime safety tips. Health news junkies can mainline headlines, while travelers find vaccine updates. For eye-openers, visit "Straight Facts on Diseases" in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

For serious help, get serious research

The mecca for finding state-of- the-art "hard" research is the National Library of Medicine's Medline database: 10 million articles from 4,000 scientific and medical journals. Info can be technical and tough to put in context, but hang in there: Non-medicos did 80 million searches last year. To access:

• ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/, the National Library of Medicine's site.
• medscape.com Click on "Medline." This is an exclusive Medscape feature that narrows the search to articles in 270 of the most popular (and consumer-friendly) journals.

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Where to learn to live well

Mental health

www.mentalhealth.org Inform-ation for everyone from patients to policymakers, plus links to mental health Web sites and a list of government publications. Visit the "Kids Area" for games and kid-related mental health Web sites.

nmha.org Aside from the policy updates found at any advocacy site, The National Mental Health Association offers fact sheets, pamphlets and resources on mental health, plus discussion boards and a directory of 300 affiliated groups. Check out the valuable tool for depression screening.

onlinepsych.com For fun, take a few of the interactive tests in the mental/emotional health area. What career is for you? What relationship works for you? What's your IQ?

NOTE: E-mail psychotherapy is gaining in popularity. While attractive to people who want anonymity and convenience, the experts worry it might be practiced by people with little psychological training.

Prevention for kids, men, women

www.ama-assn.org At the bottom of this wordy American Medical Association site is a friendly consumer health section on general and family health (including often-ignored adolescents), plus doctor and hospital "finders." Go to "Interactive health," which has tools to personalize your health profile or customize a fitness program.

www.4women.org Here's a one- stop shop for female health, with an FAQ section covering everything from birth control to hormone replacement therapy, from lesbian health to issues for Asian women. The site offers Internet links plus contact info for related groups, newsletters and agencies. Also good: acog.org, by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

pedsnet.org This pediatrician-run effort gets good word-of-mouth on parenting message boards, thanks to its focus on child wellness: news and health alerts, food safety info and immunization trackers. An original library of 600 "ask the expert" Q&As plus well-researched articles address issues such as: Will giving my 5-year-old the chicken pox vaccine harm my newborn?

familydoctor.org Check out the self-care flowcharts that suggest possible diagnoses and recommend treatments/action for all kinds of conditions. Plus, a long list of handouts on non-illness health issues such as Air Travel Health Tips.

Alternative medicine

It's tough to tell ads from legitimate information when it comes to alternative medicine. Try these sites.

www.herbs.org Adorned with flowers, this site from the Herb Research Foundation boasts a library of 150,000 articles, plus details on herb production and retailing. Visit "Online Greenpapers" for synopses of what's known about such herbs and minerals as echinacea and zinc.

www.seanet.com/~vettf/Primer.htm Billed as "The Entirely On-Line Alt[ernative] Med[icine] Primer," this simple site from the National Council on Reliable Health Information site links to mainstream and scientific articles on general and specific therapies.

Drug deals

More than 9.5 million prescriptions were filled over the Internet last year, reports Cyber Dialogue. Many health sites link to sellers such as Planetrx.com, DrugEmporium.com, drugstore.com, vitalRx.com, yesrx.com and prioritypharmacy.com. The Web also offers hundreds of sites to buy drugs from overseas pharmacies (30 tablets of Amoxicillin costs $25 here vs. $12 for 100 tablets overseas, according to one service). Yes, it's legal to buy drugs overseas for personal use if they're approved for use here and you have a valid prescription. Caution: Some overseas sites might send counterfeit, addictive, out-of-date or poorly labeled medication, leaving an injured patient with no recourse.

www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety.htm After troubles with the diabetes drug Rezulin and the diet drugs Fen/Phen, consumers want to be on top of the latest drug safety information. This is the site to find out about recalls, market withdrawals, labeling changes and other safety notifications ordered by the FDA.

www.centerwatch.com A listing of 41,000 industry- and government-sponsored clinical trials, plus drugs recently approved by the FDA.

Nutrition and fitness

spectre.ag.uiuc.edu/~food-lab/nat The Nutrition Analysis Tool lets you input the foods you eat, then analyzes them for nutrition value.

netsweat.com Wonderful fitness features include FAQs for those who teach fitness and links that include indoor,Êoutdoor and endurance sports. Click on "Ask A Personal Trainer" for confidential e-mail advice.

When Aleah Jones, above, was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder at age 6, the doctor gave her mom, Rhandi, a pamphlet and "a list of 50,000 books. I didn't know where to start." The Stonington, Conn., mother took a class about ADD at the community center, but wasn't impressed.

Six months ago, she got a computer and promptly found ADD research, information on ADD drugs and medications to deal with the side effects of ADD drugs. One of the most helpful elements: message boards for parents of ADD kids. "The parents know all the Web sites, know what research is being done, know the best books and the laws for getting help at school," says Rhandi, 30. Talking with the Internet community helped her separate out ADD from what she calls an adolescent's "middle school attitude." Thanks to this information, Aleah, now 10, is doing well at home and in class.

Still, Rhandi logs on every morning to check for any ADD news.

Where to find a support group: Many major health sites have "communities" with chat/support groups and message boards where you post a question or respond to others within a specific topic. Some of the most active health support groups are on the "Usenet" -- a global bulletin board of thousands of different topics. To find a specific health newsgroup: