Health Anxiety: Symptoms and How to Stop Worrying About Your Health

Signs of health anxiety

According to the NHS, you may have health anxiety if you:

• constantly worry about your health
• often check your body for lumps, tingling, pain or other changes
• keep asking others for reassurance that you’re not ill
• worry that doctors or tests have missed something
• look up symptoms online obsessively
• avoid anything to do with serious illness, such as medical TV programmes
• act as if you are ill, for example avoiding exercise

Anxiety itself causes real physical symptoms, such as headaches, a racing heart, chest tightness, dizziness, tingling and stomach upsets. These are easy to mistake for signs of serious illness, which then fuels more worry. See anxiety symptoms and tension headaches.

The health anxiety cycle

Health anxiety tends to follow a loop:

1. Trigger: you notice a sensation, such as a headache or a skipped heartbeat.
2. Worry: “What if it’s something serious?”
3. Anxiety: your body responds with more symptoms, such as a faster heart or tense muscles.
4. Checking: you google it, prod the area or ask someone for reassurance.
5. Brief relief, then the doubt comes back and the cycle repeats, often stronger.

Checking and reassurance feel helpful, but they teach your brain that the worry was worth taking seriously. Breaking this loop is the key to recovery.

What causes health anxiety?

• A past serious illness, in you or someone close to you
• A bereavement
• Growing up around a lot of worry about illness
• General anxiety or stress. See stress symptoms
• Health stories in the news or on social media
• Being a natural worrier. See how to stop overthinking

The NHS notes that health anxiety is related to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), because of the repeated checking and reassurance-seeking.

Health anxiety vs hypochondria

They mean the same thing. “Hypochondria” is the older term and has come to sound dismissive, so doctors now say health anxiety or, in some diagnostic manuals, illness anxiety disorder. Health anxiety is a genuine and common anxiety problem, not “making it up”.

Health anxiety , the internet and wearables

Searching symptoms online is one of the biggest drivers of health anxiety. Search results and forums tend to show the rarest and most frightening causes first, while the common, harmless explanations get less attention. People sometimes call this “cyberchondria”.

Smartwatches and fitness trackers can add to it. Constant heart rate, oxygen and sleep scores invite checking, and normal variations can look alarming. If you notice yourself checking your watch or app many times a day, try turning off health notifications or taking it off for a week and see how you feel.

Health anxiety about other people

Some people worry constantly about the health of a partner, child or parent instead of, or as well as, their own. It follows the same cycle: noticing something, fearing the worst, then checking or seeking reassurance from doctors. The same approach helps: notice the urge, delay it, and gradually reduce checking. If you’re a parent, it can help to agree with your GP or health visitor which signs need a call and which can wait.

9 ways to stop worrying about your health

1. Keep a diary. Note how often you check your body, google symptoms or ask for reassurance. Then cut back a little each week, as the NHS suggests.
2. Set a “no googling” rule. Delete health search apps or use a website blocker if you need to.
3. Reduce reassurance-seeking. Ask family to kindly not reassure you repeatedly. Explain why.
4. Challenge your thoughts. Write the worry in one column and a more balanced thought in another. For example, “These headaches mean something serious” next to “Headaches are very often a sign of stress or poor sleep”.
5. Delay the urge. When you want to check, wait 30 minutes and do something else. The urge usually fades.
6. Get back to things you’ve avoided, such as exercise, gradually.
7. Calm your body. Slow breathing lowers the physical symptoms that feed the worry. Try box breathing or grounding techniques.
8. Schedule “worry time”. Give yourself 15 minutes a day to worry, and postpone worries outside it.
9. Look after the basics. Poor sleep, caffeine and alcohol all make anxiety and physical symptoms worse. See does caffeine cause anxiety? and anxiety at night.

A calming routine can help too. Our Magnesium Glycinate Sleep Complex is an evening drink with L-theanine, and magnesium contributes to normal psychological function. Some people take our Flow CBD Oil as part of their daily routine. The FSA’s 10mg a day figure for CBD is precautionary advice rather than a legal limit, set while longer-term safety research continues. At Evopure we think it is a very cautious figure, and many adults use more. If you go above it, increase slowly, and check with your GP or pharmacist first if you take any medication.

Treatment for health anxiety

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is the main treatment. It helps you spot the worry cycle, test out your fears and drop checking and reassurance habits. In a large UK trial, people who had CBT adapted for health anxiety improved much more than those who had usual care, and twice as many reached normal levels of health anxiety, with benefits lasting two years.

iYou can refer yourself to NHS Talking Therapies without seeing a GP. A GP may also offer medicine for anxiety. For more, see how to deal with anxiety.

When to see a GP

iSee a GP if worries about your health are stopping you living normally, or self-help isn’t working. It can help to say up front, “I think I might have health anxiety.” Agree a plan with your GP for checking symptoms, rather than booking repeated appointments for reassurance.

Always get a new or changing symptom checked, such as an unexplained lump, bleeding, weight loss or a change that doesn’t go away. Call 999 for chest pain that spreads or feels heavy, sudden breathlessness or signs of a stroke. If palpitations worry you, see heart palpitations; if panic is the problem, see how to stop a panic attack.

Related guides

• Worried about chest pain? See anxiety chest pain.
• Intrusive thoughts and how to stop them taking over.
• Anxiety dizziness.
• Stress hives and when a rash needs a GP.
• If checking a sleep score has become a worry in itself, read about orthosomnia and sleep trackers.
• Worried about stomach symptoms? Our guide to anxiety stomach pain explains the red flags to get checked.
• If you lie awake checking your pulse, read why your heart feels louder at night.
• Our evidence-based guide to natural supplements for anxiety.
• Worried about twitches? Our guide to muscle twitching and anxiety explains the worry loop and the real red flags.
• A lump in the throat from anxiety: when to worry.
• Anticipatory anxiety before appointments, tests and results.
• When to worry about heart palpitations.
• For what different welts and blotches mean, see what hives look like and when they’re serious.
• Health anxiety is different from social anxiety, where the main fear is being judged by other people.
• If you’re curious about CBD and obsessive thoughts, our guide to CBD and OCD explains what the trials do and don’t show.
• If you’d like to show a friend you care, see our thinking of you gifts for someone with anxiety.
• Thinking of trying a herbal supplement? Read ashwagandha for anxiety first: the evidence is low certainty and it isn’t for everyone.