{"id":835131,"date":"2026-11-15T06:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-15T06:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/835131\/"},"modified":"2026-11-15T06:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-15T06:46:12","slug":"doctors-say-health-anxiety-is-being-fuelled-by-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/835131\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors say health anxiety is being fuelled by social media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ashley Bowden spends a large part of his workday counselling patients for their health anxiety in his regional NSW practice.<\/p>\n

“It almost feels as if it’s 50 per cent of the patients I see; we end up touching on health anxiety,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There’s certainly a number of patients that have quite severe anxiety around their health.”<\/p>\n

\"Ashely<\/p>\n

Ashley Bowden is a GP in regional NSW. (Supplied: Ashley Bowden)<\/p>\n

Dr Bowden said social media was fuelling the issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I absolutely love talking to patients about what they’ve seen online \u2026 what they’re worrying about and what’s causing them to spiral,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Olivia<\/p>\n

Olivia Loughnan completed her PhD on the link between social media and health anxiety. (Supplied: Olivia Loughnan)<\/p>\n

Psychologist Olivia Loughnan said social media played a “significant” role in triggering health anxiety.<\/p>\n

She said algorithms reinforced health-related fears by responding to what users watched, searched for and engaged with.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Someone who watches a video about the early warning signs of a serious illness, they may subsequently be exposed to more content about related symptoms,” Dr Loughnan said.<\/p>\n

“It can create the impression that serious illnesses are increasingly common or personally relevant to them.”<\/p>\n

Predictive tests advertised online<\/p>\n

Dr Bowden said the online marketing of predictive medical tests and health screenings, such as full body MRI scans or blood tests, was also playing a role.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I have a lot of patients that are on supplements or they’re undertaking private tests at huge expense,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It can lead to a huge amount of health anxiety.”<\/p>\n

The products are part of the world of longevity, biohacking and health optimisation, which has a strong following online.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There’s anti-aging hype. Then there’s the science showing real promise<\/a><\/p>\n

Biohacking and anti-aging science are raising hopes of living longer. What’s hype and what shows promise?<\/p>\n

Dr Loughnan said the trends could be positive by encouraging people to be more proactive about their health and wellbeing.<\/p>\n

“However, the concern is that pursuit of that optimal health can become excessive,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“When people are constantly exposed to information about hidden diseases, prevention scans, biological aging \u2026 they can begin to feel that being healthy is simply not enough.”<\/p>\n

She said it reinforced the idea that people should be constantly monitoring their bodies for symptoms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Psychologically, this can create heightened need for control, increased body monitoring and difficulty tolerating uncertainty,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A woman at a biohacking conference in New York City. (Four Corners: Ryan Sheridan)<\/p>\n

“There’s a difference between taking reasonable steps to look after your health and becoming preoccupied with preventing every possible illness.”Patients urged to talk to their GPs<\/p>\n

Australian Medical Association president Michael Bonning said the tests were increasingly popular around the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We see more patients seeking frequent or increasingly, not just comprehensive, but almost fringe investigations,” Dr Bonning said.<\/p>\n

“It’s sometimes very difficult for a doctor to push back and say, ‘No, you really shouldn’t have that,’ even though it is very clear that intervention or investigation doesn’t have an evidence base to it.”<\/p>\n

Listen to the podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s good to be on top of your health \u2013 but how far would you go to ensure you\u2019re staying healthy?<\/p>\n

An example of one of these tests being advertised online is full body MRI scans, which cost thousands of dollars and do not use radiation.<\/p>\n

“It’s really tempting to think that surely that’s going to give us more information \u2026 we’ll find the bad thing if it exists, whether it’s a lump or a cancer,” Dr Bowden said.<\/p>\n

Dr Bonning and Dr Bowden said they were more likely to catch incidental findings, which could lead to false positives and invasive tests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There’s no study that has demonstrated improved disease-specific survival from screening asymptomatic people without specific health risks,” Dr Bonning said.<\/p>\n

Dr Bowden said if people were concerned by something they had seen online, or were thinking about taking one of the tests, they should speak to a trusted GP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They can say, ‘I’ve seen this online’ or ‘I’ve put it into an AI bot,’ because that gives us a point of the conversation to talk around,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also said it was important to be critical of ads.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Is the person marketing that in any way interested in improving their health, or do they have an ulterior motive like making money?” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ashley Bowden spends a large part of his workday counselling patients for their health anxiety in his regional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[22226,818,102,180788,6958,1906,6623,76175,273920,273919,224,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-835131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-biohacking","tag-doctors","tag-health","tag-health-anxiety","tag-longevity","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-mri","tag-predictive-medical-tests","tag-scans","tag-social-media","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}