Homepage The Audacious Agency newsroom

Dr Google Is Unavailable

Announcement posted by The Audacious Agency 14 May 2015

Searching Online To Fix Your Health Can Be Bad For You

Who needs a health professional anymore when you have Google? One in 20 people have turned to Google to diagnose and treat illnesses and disease, but are they doing more harm than good?

Kathy Ashton, a local Nutritional Medicine Practitioner, said with the increase incidence of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, thyroid issues and other chronic dis-eases, people want to find answers. “We are sick of being sick,” she said.

A recent Queensland University of Technology (QUT) study conducted in Australia found that around 50 percent of the top 10 results from symptom-related searches are actually irrelevant.

“We are all time poor, and using Google instead of seeing a health professional - either traditional or complementary, is a prescription for disaster," Kathy said.


Kathy knows what is like to sick of being sick. Her nutritional medicine journey began in her 30s after she developed an autoimmune disease called fibromyalgia.  “I was a fit healthy young woman, but I was constantly in pain and on a cocktail of drugs,” she said.

She became curious about the link between food and health.  Even though her mainstream health professionals emphatically denied any link, she used the Hippocratic principal of ‘let food be thy medicine’ to guide her to better health.

After her husband was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, Kathy went back to university and got a degree in nutrition becoming a Nutritional Medicine Practitioner.

She now works with people to help them understand that dis-ease is not just a symptom but a reflection of their whole life – what they eat, drink, feel and do.

“What is good for you to eat seems to change depending upon the individual nutrient being studied at the time. Hence the myriad of fad diets out Google to work out what is wrong is a great way to save time but can ultimately lead to a worse outcome, if Dr Google is wrong,” Kathy said.

“What makes it even more challenging for people is that there is so much information about health and wellness online, that no one really knows what is good or bad for them anymore.”

"Diets should not be based on one individual macro or micro-nutrient but rather on a symphony of nutrients.  If you are armed with the right knowledge, avoid fads and are active, you can live a healthy life devoid of tiredness, hair thinning, memory loss and general ill health. It’s just finding someone to clear the clutter and misinformation,” Kathy said.

Kathy is hosting a workshop in Elsternwick on May 28 where she discusses the truth about food, nutrition and health, how to determine what is fad and what is fact, and how to use food as medicine.

http://flourishnutritionalmedicine.com.au/events/