Start with authorship
The first question is who wrote it and what qualifies them. Reputable health content names an author, states their credentials, and increasingly names a separate clinician who reviewed it for accuracy.
Anonymous medical advice is a warning sign on its own. So is a byline with credentials that are impressive but unrelated to the topic.
Check the date
Medical guidance changes. An article on treatment options from several years ago may describe a standard of care that has since moved on, and it will read exactly as confidently as a current one.
Look for both a publication and a review date. A page reviewed recently has at least been looked at against current guidance.
Notice what the page wants from you
Content that recommends a product and sells that product has an obvious interest in the recommendation. That does not automatically make it wrong, but it does mean it needs corroborating elsewhere.
Be similarly careful with pages built around a single dramatic claim, a personal testimonial, or an argument that mainstream medicine is hiding something. Individual stories are not evidence of what will happen to you.
Understand what statistics are telling you
Two numbers are commonly confused. A relative change — "reduces risk by half" — sounds far more dramatic than the absolute change it describes, which might be a shift from two in a thousand to one in a thousand.
Population averages also say little about individuals. A treatment that helps on average may not help you, and a rare side effect is still rare even when it is real. Where a number seems to settle a decision, it is usually worth asking what the absolute figures are.
Use good sources as your baseline
National health services, established medical libraries and professional bodies publish patient-facing material that is reviewed and dated. Use these as the reference point against which you judge everything else.
And treat all of it as preparation for a conversation rather than a replacement for one. Good online reading makes an appointment more productive; it does not substitute for someone who knows your history.
