Being concerned about our health is reasonable. After all we need to take care of ourselves don’t we? We are always being told on the telly, radio, newspapers and magazines about health scares and symptoms that seem trivial but turnout to be something really serious.

There are two difficulties that result from this and both are potentially dangerous to our health:

• We can get overly anxious about minor details of our health.

This is a problem for a significant minority of people. It often starts with some small concern about a minor change from normality or a heightened awareness of how our body feels..

For example, I notice a small bump on my skin that is a different colour to the rest of my skin. I assume it’s a malignant melanoma (a nasty form of cancer). In fact it’s probably been there for years and I just haven’t noticed it....... But there's lots of publicity about skin lumps and bumps and their relationship to cancer so my mind was primed to make this connection.

So on one level this is not unreasonable. I trot off to see the doctor who examines me, asks me questions and decides it’s something with a long name that's completely harmless but tells me to come back if it changes colour or begins to bleed.

I go away a little reassured. I then begin to fret about whether the bump is changing, looking at it repeatedly and convincing myself that the colour/size is changing.  So off I go back to the doctor who thinks it’s the same but sends me off to a specialist as I am clearly worried. The specialist says things are OK and tells me not to worry, but I don’t believe them either... Eventually I go back to the doctor again but still don’t believe their reassurance, so, I’m off back to the specialist.

In the meantime I’m asking everyone I know about all this and the rest of my life is going to pot.

I may start finding other things; bodily sensations that I used to ignore that now suggest to me that I'm really ill. I go back to the doctor with the new symptoms and eventually get a stack of tests done. I don’t believe the reassurance. Another stack of tests is done to try and reassure me. Sooner or later some minor alteration from the normal results shows up.....  now I really think there’s a problem!

In the meantime all the worry is producing it’s own physical symptoms (see the page on anxiety). So now I have further physical problems and the cycle repeats itself... By this time I am convinced I have a serious physical illness and have stopped living my usual life, becoming focused on my physical health.

You may think this is far-fetched, however things like this do happen to people and the problem can be worsened by the attempts of health professionals to reassure us by doing lots of tests. In fact it's quite common for medical students to believe they have all sorts of illnesses as they study them.  It’s an occupational hazard!

The difficulty is that we can all magnify things. This is especially true if something has happened to make us more aware of a particular illness (for example if someone we know has passed away or become ill). It’s even more likely if there has been or we think there has been a medical mistake.

Some of us are more attuned to minor changes in our body than others. Some of us fret more about our health than others. We may assume that all minor changes (especially if we don't understand them) imply a serious illness.  This is known as catastrophising.

Sometimes people focus on small health issue segments so they can justify the harmful things they are doing to themselves. This is seen in anorexia nervosa where the sufferer may have absorbed a healthy dietary message that getting fat is bad for you, and then claim they are avoiding food so they do not get fat, all whilst starving to death!

• Or, we can ignore everything we hear and don’t take the appropriate action when we really need to!

This scenario is the more common one; we can deny or ignore the things that are actually harming us. This usually applies to those of us with addictions like smoking and alcoholism.  We deny or pretend to ourselves that everything will be OK even if we know it will not... We find reasons to ignore the explanations about the dangers of smoking - “My great aunt smoked 60 a day and lived to be 95 “ - is the sort of thing we hear.

Both of these attitudes are destructive to our health, yet both are entirely understandable. It is difficult to keep a balanced view which is what we really need to do.

The media can make this even more difficult; stories about health issues are frequently told specifically to maximise shock value. This can make it difficult for us to understand the realities.

We may read an entirely accurate report in the press that the risk of a particular drug causing a very serious side effect is double than was originally thought. Now this may sound shocking when written in this way, but, if the risk of the side effect occuring has risen from 1 in 4 million to 1in 2 million then the risk of suffering the side effect is still very low.

So to decide whether or not we want to take the drug means that we need to weigh up the risks of the illness we are taking the drug for against the risks of the side effects!

Health anxieties, or lack of them, are partly to do with what we know and partly to do with what sense we make of our knowledge. Some of us are much more prone to worrying about our health than others. We may be naturally anxious, or have had experiences that make us anxious about our health.

Those of us who find ourselves so preoccupied about illness that it affects our lives negatively may find Cognitive Behavioural Therapy useful. There are a lot of approaches a Therapist can take, working with you to help you make changes in your life and to challenge your negative thoughts. Counselling can be very effective and even comforting, where you can just talk to someone about your troubles, helping you to get everything off your mind and stop it building up.

If therapeutic approaches do not work then drug therapy may help reduce your anxiety. See the page on Anxiety for further details.

In the meantime you may want to Chat to a Buddy, or check out our Treatments and Self Help sections, try to take little steps everyday to make yourself feel better.