Well duuuuuuh huuuuuuh!

A. Nonymous (I assume that's not your real name) left this comment:

I just found a good article on hypochondria (well there are several articles on
this page, scroll down): http://www.anxietyandstress.com/healthanxiety.html Made me think and I wanted to share...

I've read this article a few times over the years. I'm not a fan of it. No Offense to A. (Al Nonymous? Arthur Nonymous? Ooo, maybe you're Latino; Arturo Nonymous?) but I think the author of this document has some misconecptions.

patients seen by primary-care physicians suffer from hypochondria, the
irrational fear of illness.

Irrational? Really? Studies have shown that hypochondriacs actually underestimate their risk of disease. We just do so to a lesser extent than the 'normal' population. Then, there's this gem:

Doctors often dislike their hypochondriac patients; they consume inordinate
amounts of time, and strain hospital resources with their interminable
complaints. In the United States, it is estimated, twenty billion dollars a year
is spent on patients whose psychological distress requires repeated tests and
procedures. Many doctors and nurses make fun of hypochondriacs, calling them
"crocks" and "turkeys." The favored epithet among interns and residents is
gomer, which stands for Get Out of My Emergency Room. Many doctors are relieved when a hypochondriac leaves them for another physician.

Anyone of us have dealt with this sort of reception in the doctor's office. I won't go into how it makes us feel or what we think about doing to them with a 12 volt battery, some jumper cables, K-Y Jelly, and that stethascope...ahem...but it hurts.

There are, however, some decent points to this article. There's this one:

It wasn't until the nineteenth century that hypochondria came to be
narrowly defined as an excessive fear of illness. Not coincidentally, the
disorder flowered at the same time that modern medicine began identifying one
rare disease after another. In his novel ''In Search of Lost Time,'' Proust
wrote, ''For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in
healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more
powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill.''

I've never been a Proust fan, I don't even have any of his singles, but this is profound. Many, if not most, of my 'episodes' have either preceded or....after-ceded....a regularly scheduled doctor's visit. The fear that I might be sick makes me sick...go medical science!

The article does go on to talk about cognitive-behavioral therapy and, especially interesting, the link between OCD and hypochondria. Just the definition of hypochondria should lead one to make the connection between an obsessive-compulsive disorder and a obsessive worry over one's health. But what do I know....I'm just a gomer.