Millions of consumers get health information from magazines, TV or the Internet. Some of the information is reliable and up to date; some is not. How can you tell the good from the bad?

First, consider the source. If you use the Web, look for an "about us" page. Check to see who runs the site: Is it a branch of the government, a university, a health organization, a hospital or a business? Focus on quality. Does the site have an editorial board? Is the information reviewed before it is posted? Be skeptical. Things that sound too good to be true often are. You want current, unbiased information based on research.

What’s the Bottom Line?

How much do we know about online resources for complementary health approaches?

The number of Web and social media sites, along with mobile apps, offering health information about complementary and integrative health approaches (often called complementary and alternative medicine) grows every day.

What do we know about the accuracy of online health information?

• Some online sources of information on complementary health approaches are useful, but others are inaccurate or misleading.
• Don’t rely on online resources when making decisions about your health. If you’re considering a complementary health approach, discuss it with your health care provider.

Checking Out Online Sources of Health Information: Five Quick Questions

If you’re visiting an online health site for the first time or downloading a new app, ask these five questions:

1. Who runs or created the site or app? Can you trust them?
2. What is the site or app promising or offering? Do its claims seem too good to be true?
3. When was its information written or reviewed? Is it up-to-date?
4. Where does the information come from? Is it based on scientific research?
5. Why does the site or app exist? Is it selling something?

Finding Health Information on the Internet: How To Start

• To find accurate health information, start with one of these organized collections of high-quality resources:
  • MedlinePlus, sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
  • healthfinder.gov, sponsored by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
• If you’re looking for information about complementary and integrative health approaches:
  • Use the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) Web site as a starting point. NCCIH is the Federal Government’s lead agency for scientific research on complementary and integrative health approaches.
  • Follow NCCIH on Facebook(link is external), Twitter(link is external), Pinterest(link is external), and Instagram(link is external). These accounts are updated and managed by NCCIH and provide the latest resources on a variety of complementary health approaches.
  • For information on dietary supplements, visit the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements Web site.
  • For additional reliable resources from Federal agencies or the World Health Organization on complementary health approaches, visit NCCIH’s Links to Other Organizations page.

Finding Health Information on Social Media

• About one-third of American adults use social networking sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, as a source of health information. If you do:
• Check the sponsor’s Web site.
  • Health information on social networking sites is often very brief. For more information, go to the sponsoring organization’s Web site. On Twitter, look for a link to the Web site in the header; on Facebook, look in the About section.
• Verify that social media accounts are what they claim to be.
  • Some social networking sites have a symbol that an account has been verified. For example, Twitter uses a blue badge.
  • Use the link from the organization’s official Web site to go to its social networking sites.

Finding Health Information on Mobile Health Apps

• There are thousands of mobile apps (a software program you access using your phone or other mobile device) that provide health information you can read on your mobile devices. Almost 20 percent of smartphone owners had at least one health app on their phones in 2012.
• Keep these things in mind when using a mobile health app:
  • The content of most apps isn’t written or reviewed by medical experts and may be inaccurate and unsafe. In addition, the information you enter when using an app may not be secure.
  • There’s little research on the benefits, risks, and impact of health apps, such as the many mindfulness meditation apps that are now available.
  • It’s not always easy to know what personal information an app will access or how it will store your data.
  • Before you download an app, find out if the store you get the app from says who created it. Don’t trust the app if contact or Web site information for the creator isn’t available.

Are You Reading News or Advertising?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned the public about fake online news sites. The site may look real, but is actually an advertisement. The site may use the logos of legitimate news organizations or similar names and Web addresses. To get you to sign up for whatever they’re selling, they may describe an “investigation” into the effectiveness of the product. But everything is fake: there is no reporter, no news organization, and no investigation. Only the links to a sales site are real. Fake news sites have promoted questionable products, including acai berry for weight loss, work-at-home opportunities, and debt reduction plans.

You should suspect that a news site may be fake if it:

• Endorses a product. Real news organizations generally don’t do this.
• Only quotes people who say good things about the product.
• Presents research findings that seem too good to be true. (If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.)
• Contains links to a sales site.
• Includes only positive reader comments, and you can’t add a comment of your own.

How To Protect Yourself From Fake News Sites

If you suspect that a news site is fake, look for a disclaimer somewhere on the page (often in small print) that indicates that the site is an advertisement. Also, don’t rely on Internet news reports when making important decisions about your health. If you’re considering a health product described in the news, discuss it with your health care provider.

More to Consider

• If you’re thinking about using a dietary supplement, first get information on it from reliable sources. Keep in mind that dietary supplements may interact with medications or other supplements and may contain ingredients not listed on the label. Your health care provider can advise you.
• Take charge of your health—talk with your health care providers about any complementary health approaches you use. Together, you can make shared, well-informed decisions.

When something’s ailing you, do you turn to the Internet or an app on your phone to help figure out what’s wrong? Free symptom checking programs usually don’t give the correct diagnosis first, a study found, and their advice on when to seek help usually errs on the side of caution.

Symptom checking programs ask a series of questions about symptoms. They analyze the responses and then give a possible diagnosis. Some also offer triage advice about whether to seek medical care and, if so, how quickly and at what kind of facility. For people with a life-threatening problem, such as stroke or heart attack, symptom checkers could save lives. For those with a problem that doesn’t require a medical visit, they can save trouble and costs.

The helpfulness of symptom checkers depends on their accuracy. To evaluate the performance of these programs, an NIH-funded research team searched for free symptom checkers online, in the Apple app store, and on Google Play. Many symptom checkers worked in similar ways. The scientists chose a set of 23 programs for analysis.

The symptom checkers were tested by seeing how well they could assess 45 standardized patient descriptions. The team found that the checkers listed the correct diagnosis as the first option in only 34% of cases. The correct diagnosis was within the top 20 possible diagnoses 58% of the time.

The checkers provided helpful triage advice in 57% of the cases. Triage performance was most accurate in emergencies, with appropriate advice given in 80% of cases. Some symptom checkers provided more accurate advice than others.

Overall, the checkers tended to be cautious, encouraging users to seek health care when self care would do.

“These tools may be useful in patients who are trying to decide whether they should get to a doctor quickly,” says lead author Dr. Ateev Mehrotra of Harvard Medical School. “But in many cases, users should be cautious and not take the information they receive from online symptom checkers as gospel.”

As symptom checkers become more accurate, they could reduce unneeded trips to the hospital and be more cost-effective than nurse-staffed phone lines.

Have you ever been tempted to buy your medicines from an online pharmacy or another website?

You can protect yourself and your family by being cautious when buying medicine online. Some pharmacy websites operate legally and offer convenience, privacy, cost savings and safeguards for purchasing medicines.

Not all websites are the same. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that there are many unsafe online pharmacies that claim to sell prescription drugs at deeply discounted prices, often without requiring a prescription. These internet-based pharmacies often sell unapproved, counterfeit or otherwise unsafe medicines outside the safeguards followed by licensed pharmacies.

Many unsafe online pharmacies use fake “storefronts” to mimic licensed pharmacies or to make you think their medicines come from countries with high safety standards. But the medicines they sell could have been made anywhere, with little care or concern for safety and effectiveness. Also, these drugs could be fake, expired or otherwise unsafe for you and your family.

How can you tell if an online pharmacy is operating legally? The FDA’s BeSafeRx page has resources and tools to help you make safer and more informed decisions when buying prescription medicines online.

Warning Signs of an Unsafe Online Pharmacy

Beware of online pharmacies that:

• Do not require a doctor’s prescription.
• Are not licensed in the U.S. and by your state board of pharmacy.
• Do not have a licensed pharmacist on staff to answer your questions.
• Send medicine that looks different than what you receive at your usual pharmacy, or arrives in packaging that is broken, damaged, in a foreign language, has no expiration date, or is expired.
• Offer deep discounts or prices that seem too good to be true.
• Charge you for products you never ordered or received.
• Do not provide clear written protections of your personal and financial information.
• Sell your information to other websites.

These pharmacies often sell medicines that can be dangerous because they may:

• Have too much or too little of the active ingredient you need to treat your disease or condition.
• Not contain the right active ingredient.
• Contain the wrong ingredients or other harmful substances.

The active ingredient of an approved drug product is what makes the medicine effective for the illness or condition it is intended to treat. If a medicine has unknown active ingredients, it could fail to have the intended effect, could have an unexpected interaction with other medicines you are taking, could cause dangerous side effects, or could cause other serious health problems, such as serious allergic reactions.

Also, these drugs may not have been stored properly, such as in a warehouse without necessary temperature controls, which may cause the medicine to be ineffective in treating your condition.

Know the Signs of a Safe Online Pharmacy

There are ways you can identify a safe online pharmacy. These pharmacies:

• Always require a doctor’s prescription.
• Provide a physical address and telephone number in the U.S.
• Have a licensed pharmacist on staff to answer your questions.
• Are licensed with a state board of pharmacy.

Another way to help ensure you are using a safe and legal online pharmacy is to check the pharmacy’s license in the state’s board of pharmacy license database by using the location tool on the FDA’s BeSafeRx website. If your online pharmacy is not listed, don’t use that pharmacy.

Health information, whether in print or online, should come from a trusted, credible source. Government agencies, hospitals, universities, and medical journals and books that provide evidence-based information are sources you can trust. Too often, other sources can provide misleading or incorrect information. If a source makes claims that are too good to be true, remember—they usually are.

There are many websites, books, and magazines that provide health information to the public, but not all of them are trustworthy. Use the resources provided below to safeguard yourself when reviewing sources of health information.

Websites

Online sources of health information should make it easy for people to learn who is responsible for posting the information. They should make clear the original source of the information, along with the medical credentials of the people who prepare or review the posted material.

Use the following questions to determine the credibility of health information published online.

• Who manages this information?
  The person or group that has published health information online should be easy to find somewhere on the page.
• What are the letters at the end of the web address?
  Government websites end in ".gov" and those ending with ".edu" are run by a university or other educational institution. These are sources that you can usually trust. If you see ".org" or ".com" at the end of a web address, it may also be a trusted site. However, check it closely to make sure.
• Who is paying for the project, and what is their purpose?
  You should be able to find this information in the “About Us” section.
• What is the original source of the information that they have posted?
  If the information was originally published in a research journal or a book, they should say which one(s) so that you can find it.
• How is information reviewed before it gets posted?
  Most health information publications have someone with medical or research credentials (e.g., someone who has earned an M.D., D.O., or Ph.D.) review the information before it gets posted, to make sure it is correct.
• How current is the information?
  Online health information sources should show you when the information was posted or last reviewed.
• If they are asking for personal information, how will they use that information and how will they protect your privacy?
  This is very important. Do not share personal information until you understand the policies under which it will be used and you are comfortable with any risk involved in sharing your information online.

Social Media

Social media sites (such as Facebook, Twitter) are good ways to stay connected. However, when you're seeking medical information, only follow social media from reputable sources. Many trusted organizations have social media accounts that link to their websites. For example, the National Cancer Institute has an official Facebook page and many Twitter accounts from its offices and departments.

When it comes to personal social media accounts, it's common for users to post their experiences with illness. This may include:

• How they're feeling physically
• Treatments they're going through
• Complementary therapies they're using, such as a type of diet or supplements
• What feelings they're having

But remember that everyone is different. Even someone with the exact same kind of cancer has a different body and health history from you. And never take recommendations for treatment or medicines from someone other than your doctor. You don't know where or how the user got their information. You also don't know if the information is current, or what the user's knowledge of cancer is.

Books

A number of books have been written about cancer, cancer treatment, and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Some books contain trustworthy content, while others do not.

It's important to know that information is always changing and that new research results are reported every day. Be aware that if a book is written by only one person, you may only be getting that one person's view.

If you go to the library, ask the staff for suggestions. Or if you live near a college or university, there may be a medical library available. Local bookstores may also have people on staff who can help you. If you find a book online, look very carefully at the author’s credentials, background, and expertise. Questions you may want to ask yourself are:

• Is the author an expert on this subject?
• Do you know anyone else who has read the book?
• Has the book been reviewed by other experts?
• Was it published in the past 5 years?
• Does the book offer different points of view, or does it seem to hold one opinion?
• Has the author researched the topic in full?
• Are the references listed in the back?

Magazines

If you want to look for articles you can trust, search online medical journal databases or ask your librarian to help you look for medical journals, books, and other research that has been done by experts.

Articles in popular magazines are usually not written by experts. Rather, the authors speak with experts, gather information, and then write the article. If claims are made in a magazine, remember:

• The authors may not have expert knowledge in this area.
• They may not say where they found their information.
• The articles have not been reviewed by experts.
• The publisher may have ties to advertisers or other organizations. Therefore, the article may be one-sided in the information or view(s) it presents.

When you read these articles, you can use the same process that the magazine writer uses:

• Speak with experts
• Ask lots of questions
• Then decide if the therapy is right for you

Complementary Health Approaches In the News

News stories about complementary approaches to health are often on television, the Internet, and in magazines and newspapers.

In fact, the media is one of our main sources of information when we make decisions about complementary health approaches. While many news reports are reliable, some are missing important information, and some are confusing, conflicting, or misleading.

Missing Information From Health Stories

Health stories in the media teach us about the importance of health issues and change how we think and what we do about our health. High-quality news reports give us realistic expectations and inform the medical community about medical advances. But news stories about complementary health approaches often lack details that could help us make good decisions about our health.

What information is sometimes missing from news stories?

• How well one approach works compared with another
• The side effects of an approach
• Whether a study’s results are “statistically significant”—meaning they didn’t happen just by chance
• Whether the study was done in animals or in people

What’s Missing: Important Details!

A 2011 news story reported on a study comparing the conventional flu medicine Tamiflu, a common Chinese herbal flu product called maxingshigan–yinqiaosan, and the combination of the two.

Compared with no treatment, the combination helped relieve participants’ fevers sooner, the news story explained.

But what was missing from the news story?

What was missing: The story didn’t say that participants’ fevers went down only about 11 hours sooner with the combination of products, which readers may want to know when they’re deciding whether to use the products. The story also didn’t mention that none of the products helped with symptoms such as cough and sore throat.

What’s Missing: Information on Side Effects!

Potential harmful side effects of a complementary health approach and the quality of the evidence supporting a study’s findings are sometimes left out or not fully explained in health news stories.

One lengthy news story from 2010 talked about using fish oil during pregnancy.

What was missing from the news story?

What was missing: This story did not mention the possible side effects of fish oil, like upset stomach and interactions with prescription or over-the-counter medications.

What’s Missing: The Full Story!

Another news story reported that men and women in a study who took vitamin A were 60 percent less likely to develop melanoma than those participants who did not take it. But as the story points out “the reduced risk was more pronounced in women than men.”

What was missing from the news story?

What was missing: What the story didn’t say was that the reduced risk for men was not “statistically significant,” meaning that the reduction was so small it might have been due to chance. That’s very different than a 60 percent reduction. The study’s authors estimated that among women in the general population, regular vitamin A use would reduce the risk for melanoma by 35 to 90 percent.

What’s Missing: Humans!

Media stories sometimes report the results of studies done only on animals without explaining that such basic science may have little immediate significance to people.

For example, a 2010 news story reported that dark chocolate may help guard against brain injury after a stroke.

What was missing from the news story?

What was missing: The story did not say that the study was done on mice.

Conflicting Health News

Media reports about new medical research findings sometimes give conflicting information. You may see a news report that a health product or approach is good for you, and later see another news report that it’s not. Why do you think there is conflicting information in media reports?