TED Talks Daily - How to google your symptoms without freaking out | John Whyte

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Why does searching your symptoms online always leave you more frightened than before? As former chief medical officer of WebMD, physician John Whyte spent years believing more information meant better health — until he saw how too much of it was making people spiral. In a world of health influencers, algorithms and AI tools designed to keep you clicking, he reveals why clarity and context is a better prescription. Learn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. We all have Googled our symptoms. A billion times a day, in fact. But what happens when even a doctor, with 20 years of experience, starts doubting his own treatment because of what his Instagram feed is telling him? We're very willing to have this attitude of, why not try it? What's the harm? You know, someone else had a good experience.

So maybe we will too. That's John White, a physician and the former chief medical officer of WebMD. In his talk, he explores why we're so quick to trust online sources of information about our health and how you can search your symptoms without spirally. These are powerful tools in terms of generative AI and chat GPT 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.

I want you to become informed. I want you to become empowered. But the challenge is information isn't knowledge. That's coming up after a short break. And now our TED Talk of the day. 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 when we're searching about our health and we're having some of these challenges? And as I said, we all do it.

You know, I used to come out and ask, 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 search on health there is every single day. And it's actually going up. And when you put it into context is how many is that every hour, every minute? And 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's giving you too much personal information. 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. 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 Surveillance.

room and impaction. Anyone ever hear that basically means your ears 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 much ear wax 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.

Remember the phrase hypocondriac? People that have symptoms and every symptom is always the most serious. Well, now we have this phrase, you might have heard it, cyberconjurac, right? You go online. I always feel cyberconjuracts 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 cyberconjury act. 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 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, you know, how did it go?

And he says to me, you know, it could be Mercer. And I thought, that's pretty clever for a 12-year-old, but Mercer's still kind of unusual. And he said, and 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 Mercer.

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, he says, could be jumpers knee, which is a Patella tendonitis. It's not.

It's just, she just started to work out. now Kearney is bothering her. But I get it. These are powerful tools in terms of generative AI and chat GPT 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. 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. And that can be challenging. There's a lot of misinformation out there. And algorithms often drive you to inaccurate information. So the feeds on Instagram are often driven by algorithms and what you search. So my younger son, that's my older son.

I have a younger son who very much wants a golden retriever. So my Instagram feed is loaded with Goldies, where I think everyone has a Goldie. or it's on a lot of wellness information having been at WebMD and a physician. And like many people in the population, I'm on a statin for primary prevention because of high lipids. And I've been starting to, I like to read other doctors' feats. And there's a bunch of cardiologists that are saying, you don't really need to be on a statin. It really should be diet and exercise and that statins actually can increase dementia. not decreased dementia. Now, here I am. I've been a physician for 20 plus years. I know the data

on statins, and I'm starting to think, maybe I don't need a statin. And then I'm getting more doctor's feeds that are saying, you don't need to be on a statin. And I'm thinking, this can't be right. So what do I do? I dig a little deeper. I see that many of these physicians that are talking about this are selling a particular product. Some of them have had some issues with medical license, but the algorithms drive you to the same type of information that you're already receiving. And that can make it more challenging because it really comes to an issue of trust. Who can you trust? And it's about that human interaction. Are you going to trust a chatbot or an influencer,

or are you going to trust the relationship that you have with your doctor, the nurse, the pharmacist? When you think about searching for health information online, and we all do, and that is a good thing and can be a powerful tool

because I want you to be empowered. Here's what I want you to think. When you search for financial information, What do you do? Do you just listen to any influencer that has a million followers or two million followers to do cryptocurrency or to invest in a certain product?

No. What do you do? You check the credentials of that person and try to corroborate that information somewhere else. You think does it mean? make sense? Can I really make 50 times my investment in a short period of time? And what do most of us do? We ask someone that we can trust. We ask an expert. Does this make sense? And why do you do that? Because it's your money. And that's important. Your future. But I would argue your health. is even more important, certainly for your future.

And sometimes when it comes to our health, we're very willing to have this attitude of, why not try it? What's the harm? We're willing to listen to anyone. You know, someone else had a good experience, so maybe we will too. But you're much more discriminating

when it comes to your finances. So we talk about joy. We talk about our health often contributes to our joy or takes away from our joy. So it's important that you do become empowered. You do become educated. But then you have to take that next step and think about that connection with a human. I think there's a great role for technology. Although sometimes I think there might be too much technology.

I don't know if others agree with that as well. But when it comes to your health, the most important element that you have, you want clarity, not confusion. And that comes from those elements of knowing who the messenger is. checking that information, corroborating that information, knowing if it sounds right to you, and then talking about it to someone that you can trust. Thank you.

That was John White at TEDx Nashville in 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonica, Song Marnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faisi Bogan.

Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balehzo. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.