DENVER — When you have a health scare, it’s second nature to hop on Google to search for an explanation for the symptoms.
But searching for common symptoms online can often lead us to believe it’s something more extreme than it really is.
That’s why analysts at HighSpeedInternet.com and Medicare Health Plans teamed up to identify what health condition each state was most paranoid about, based on Google searches.
Teams used Google Trends to identify the most searched health-related keywords in the U.S. for the past year, then cross-referenced the results on a state level to find out what health condition each state has been consulting the internet about most frequently.
For Colorado, it was asthma. That was one of two most frequently searched health concerns nationwide. The second was diabetes.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 9 percent of Americans have diabetes and more than 8 percent have asthma.
The researchers found Delaware, which has one of the highest breast cancer incidence rates in the United States, also had breast cancer as its top Googled health concern.
Binge drinking is a big problem in Montana, and the state’s Google searches for alcoholism might point to these worries.
Three states — Alaska, Louisiana and North Carolina — and the District of Columbia are searching about STDs, and those areas are included in the top five with the highest STDs rates in the U.S.
