If we’re truthful with ourselves, we’d all admit that we’ve consulted Dr. Google on several occasions to find out what our ailments mean. Whether it’s a sports-induced injury or a nasty cough we’ve had for the third day in a row, we know that after we’ve sent that question into cyberspace, the millions of results that will inevitably come firing back at us are only likely to instil fear – but we sometimes just can’t help ourselves.

Which is why we weren’t surprised to learn that worrying excessively about our health – fuelled by consulting the internet about our symptoms – is a growing problem in the UK, a study has found.

Funded by the National Institute for Health Research, the study involved 444 people aged 16-75 years old, all of whom had visited various departments at five general hospitals in England.

Researchers found one in five people who attended hospital outpatient appointments suffered from health anxiety – although only one in ten were ever diagnosed with an illness.

Over a five-year period, outpatients became increasingly likely to mistake symptoms of health anxiety for physical illnesses.

How googling your symptoms online could be fuelling ‘cyberchondria’