A couple of weeks ago I was getting ready for work, carefully ironing a shirt, when my spray-starching was interrupted by a sudden and acute pain in the middle of my chest.

It was a sharp jolt that I had never experienced before and it made me nearly double-over in agony.

The pain subsided a bit after a few seconds. I stood up, pulled my shoulder blades back, took a deep breath, and finished getting ready for work.

But the pain lingered into the night and — when I should've been asleep — I logged onto the Internet to look into it. In a short amount of time, I concluded that I had suffered a mild heart attack or an episode of angina — my poor 39-year-old heart was being deprived of life-sustaining blood and oxygen.

Had the Internet just saved my life? Or had I developed a case of cyberchondria — anxiety bred by too much information online? Cyberspace has largely replaced the grapevine, medical books and that weathered copy of the Physicians' Desk Reference manual for people worried about their health.

That can be both a boon and a bane, as I would discover.

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CYBERCHONDRIA

Roughly 136 million U.S. adults have turned to the Internet to search for health-related information, according to an August poll by Harris Interactive.

And although many health care professionals say the easy access to medical information is helpful overall, it's hard to know which sites are reliable. For some people, reading a list of symptoms without broader medical knowledge can create unnecessary panic.

With health costs spiraling ever upward, is the Internet creating expensive, unnecessary hospital trips?

Neither the American Medical Association nor the National Center for Health Statistics tracks how the Internet affects doctor visits. But Dennis Woo, assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, said he "absolutely" has seen an increase in parents coming to the hospital after checking their child's symptoms online.

"It really causes a lot of unnecessary concern and stress on the parents' part," Woo said. "They plug the symptoms in and worry until they go in and check with the doctor. Most of the time it's not true and everything ends up fine. But for that day or two until they see their doctor it causes undue worrying."

And for hypochondriacs, a little information can increase anxiety, said Brian Fallon, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. Everyone has a certain amount of illness anxiety that is normal, Fallon said, but when someone becomes overly concerned it can lead to a cycle of "increasing, spiraling distress."

On the other hand, Woo said that the wealth of online health information has made patients more informed and can even help doctors make better diagnoses.

"If it wasn't the Internet, patients would be reading stuff in magazines or newspapers," he said. "The Internet has just raised people's awareness. Most health professional are not threatened by it. It's not necessarily a bad thing."

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BACK TO ME

After diagnosing myself, I made a midnight run to the local Rite-Aid and bought aspirin and two bottles of coenzyme Q-10. The anxiety of my impending death kept me awake all night as I heard every weakening beat of my failing heart.

Matters worsened when I had one of those really realistic dreams in which I suffered a massive heart attack in bed, one of those "Sanford and Son" big ones. ("I'm coming, Elizabeth!")

The next morning I walked into the emergency room down the street. The nurses, after asking some awkward personal questions, hooked me up to an EKG machine to check the electrical voltage in my heart. The results came back in a few minutes and, fortunately, my heart was fine. A blood test and X-ray also came back clean.

The doctor said the pain was musculo-skeletal and nothing to do with my heart.

Then I remembered my weekend -- I had helped a friend move and carried all the heavy stuff. All this for a pulled muscle.

The lesson: It's OK to check yourself online, just don't get carried away.

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Paul Chavez, an asap reporter based in Los Angeles, is feeling just fine now.

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