Symptom Guide

Health Wizard begins with what you are actually feeling. It is a signpost, not a diagnosis - and the most useful thing it can do is tell you when to stop reading and go.

How to use a symptom guide sensibly

Searching symptoms online reliably produces the rarest and most frightening explanation rather than the likeliest one. Common things are common: most headaches are tension or dehydration, most stomach upsets are self-limiting, most coughs are viral.

What is worth paying attention to is not the symptom in isolation but the pattern: how long it has lasted, whether it is getting worse, and whether anything else has changed alongside it.

The useful question is rarely "what could this be". It is "does this need someone to look at it, and how soon".

Go to a hospital now for

Chest pain or pressure. Sudden severe headache, the worst you have had. Face drooping, arm weakness or slurred speech - stroke, where minutes matter. Difficulty breathing. Heavy bleeding. A stiff neck with fever and a rash. Confusion or fainting. Severe abdominal pain. Any thought of harming yourself.

See a doctor within days for

Fever lasting more than three days. Unexplained weight loss. A lump that is new or growing. A cough lasting more than three weeks - which in India means ruling out tuberculosis. Blood anywhere it should not be. A mole that has changed. Any symptom that is steadily worsening rather than settling.