By the time you walk into a physio appointment, there’s a good chance you’ve already met Dr Google. You’ve typed in your symptoms, scrolled past the worst-case headlines, and quietly decided whether you’re “probably fine” or “definitely broken.” The problem isn’t just the curiosity, it’s that the internet is brilliant at listing possibilities and terrible at judging probability. A rare condition with dramatic symptoms gets the same screen space as something common, boring, and far more likely.

What Google can’t see is context. It doesn’t watch how you move, hear how the pain started, or notice that you only feel it after a stressful week and terrible sleep. It can’t tell the difference between tissue damage, nervous system sensitivity, fear of re-injury, or a body that’s simply overloaded. So when you arrive convinced you’ve already solved the mystery, it can actually make your pain louder. Anxiety turns the volume up, and suddenly every twinge feels like proof.

Using the internet to understand your body isn’t wrong. But diagnosis isn’t about finding a match,  it’s about ruling things out, finding patterns, and figuring out what actually matters for you. Our job as physios isn’t to out-Google you. It’s to help you make sense of the noise, find a diagnosis, and build a plan that’s based on your real life, not a search result at 2am. 

By all means use Google to find a great new recipe, to check the weather for your upcoming holiday or to check when your favourite artist is coming to town. But don’t use it to google why you have a sore neck, or why your knee was playing up when you were running.

Tanya