Canadians going online for health info

OTTAWA, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Many Canadians are turning to the Internet with questions about health and lifestyle, and a majority who do say they trust the information they find.

To access health information, 41 percent of Canadian adults in a poll said they went to online sites concerning a specific disease, medical issue or health-related product, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Wednesday.

And 67 percent of the time they trust the information they're getting from such sites, the poll suggests.

Women are more likely to turn to the Internet for health advice, the poll found, and a study released in November by the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, supports that finding.

"What we found was that women wanted to learn about health on their own terms and also that they may have felt embarrassed about their health issue," Queensland's Dr. Julie-Anne Carroll said. "The anonymity of asking for information online is appealing to those who do feel embarrassed."

But a study by researchers at the Department of Pediatrics at Nottingham University Hospital in Britain casts serious doubt on the accuracy of health information found online.

The study found that while government-run sites were consistently accurate in their health advice, news sites were right only 55 percent of the time and sites sponsored by a product or service gave no helpful advice.