A recent study revealed what medical symptoms were the most commonly searched on Google, state by state across the U.S.
People turned to the search engine for a variety of health-related questions and concerns. Although many of the searches were for common symptoms, that was not the case in South Carolina.
The symptom Palmetto State residents Googled about more than anything else was different from the other 49 states. They were concerned with the color of their poop, according to medicarehealthplans.com.
South Carolina residents were Googling “dark green stool” more than any other symptom over the past year, research from the study showed.
Wisconsin was the only other state where the residents asked Google about the meaning behind the color of their feces.
But unlike South Carolina’s “dark green stool,” people living in Wisconsin wanted the search engine to inform them about “light colored poop,” medicarehealthplans.com reported.
The Palmetto State’s neighbors in North Carolina were far less colorful with their most common query. The most common symptom Googled in N.C., and New York, was “loss of sleep,” according to the study.
Overall, the study found that the most Googled symptom in the U.S. was stress.
Stress was the top concern in one-fifth of the states. In 2017, the American Psychological Association said the top sources of stress were “money, work, the current political climate, the future of the nation, and violence and crime.”
Other common searches included nasal congestion, stuffy nose, and sniffles. Some other unique searches saw people looking up sweaty palms (California), pregnancy cravings (Tennessee), night sweats (Maine) and uncircumcised problems (Indiana).
According to medicarehealthplans.com, the study was based on the most frequently searched symptoms of the past year on Google Trends. But it pointed out that the findings “don’t mean these are the symptoms most people have in each state.”
The people behind the study also remind that Google can’t “diagnose the cause of a condition. There’s no substitute for seeing a real doctor.”
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