Which Health Website Do You Visit For Answers to Your Medical Questions?

The sad truth is when you're a boomer, you never know when something is going to go wrong with your body. With 40, 50, even 60 years of life behind you, things just happen. Aches and pains are just part of the midlife story. When pain does strike, or a headache lingers, when you just can't figure out what's wrong with you, do you ever check out health websites for the answers? If you do, which health websites do you find reliable? Recently a friend of mine hurt his back reaching for a box of cereal on a top shelf. Somehow he had twisted the wrong way and within moments he was in absolute agony. We knew nothing was broken - it was just a bad sprain, but we were at a loss for how best to treat the pain. I immediately went to the Internet and did a quick search for back pain. There were more than 48 million entries! We looked through some of the more credible sites based on well known names: Mayo Clinic, Boston Medical Center, and New England Baptist Hospital. They all had comprehensive sites with good advice but the one web site that had the easiest navigation and quickest answers for our particular need was WebMD (http://www.webmd.com). It's written in simple straightforward language so that even the lay person can follow along easily. True, it's loaded with advertising, but still it offers answers quickly. For more in-depth answers, one of the other sites serves well. But for a quick answer to our immediate question, WebMD had the answers.