What Is Health Anxiety – And Can It Make You Sick?

May 26, 2026

A concerned senior man scrolling on a mobile phone while in bed

It’s normal to worry about your health from time to time, and to ask Google or ChatGPT about symptoms. But for people with health anxiety, minor symptoms can set off a cycle of worry that can be hard to break. Can the stress of this actually make you physically sick?

“The answer to whether we can worry ourselves sick is complicated,” says Jennifer Levin, PhD, a clinical psychologist in the Behavioral Health Institute, Co-Director of the University Hospitals Behavioral Health Research Group and the Psychiatry Research Collaborative. “But if you’re living with constant anxiety, it can affect your physical health over time.”

What Is Health Anxiety?

Having some concern about physical symptoms can actually be helpful. “Worrying about symptoms leads us to take action,” says Dr. Levin. “We look up information, become informed and decide whether to go to the doctor.”

Health anxiety, also known as illness anxiety disorder or hypochondria, is a general term for when a person is persistently worried that certain symptoms or sensations mean they’re sick. In many cases, they may be convinced they have a serious illness or disease, which is likely to be deadly.

People with health anxiety tend to fall into two categories:

Care seekers: They spend a lot of time seeking advice and getting medical tests. Most people with health anxiety struggle to tolerate normal bodily sensations and they often develop fear around symptoms. “They’re afraid their symptoms may mean they have some terrible condition that they’re going to die from,” says Dr. Levin.
Care avoiders: They avoid going to the doctor or getting medical care as much as possible. Their health anxiety may make it hard for them to trust doctors. Some may worry their concerns won’t be taken seriously, while others may avoid care because they’re afraid of what they might find out.

Dr. Levin adds that never having any health-related worries can also put your physical health at risk. “People who have no anxiety about it are very unlikely to take care of their health and seek medical help, even when they do have a problem that could potentially get worse without care.”

When Anxiety About Your Health Is a Problem

There’s a difference between noticing a weird symptom, looking it up and going to the doctor if it gets worse and immediately jumping to dire conclusions and heading to urgent care.

“Looking up information is helpful and responsible,” says Dr. Levin. “But it can be a problem if you’re doing a search that specifically focuses on the bad stuff, instead of first considering all of the common reasons you might have the symptom and addressing those first.”

Examples might include reactions like:

Having reflux and worrying that it’s stomach cancer.
Having indigestion and thinking it’s a heart attack.
Noticing a minor tremor in your hand and becoming convinced you have Parkinson’s disease.
Occasionally forgetting a word and believing it’s a sign of dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease.

“If you do get diagnosed with a disease, like cancer, and your whole life is revolving around your healthcare appointments, tests and treatments, that's appropriate,” says Dr. Levin. “But if you have health anxiety, which is a real condition, the problem that needs to be treated is the health anxiety, and there is effective treatment for it.”

If you’re not sure whether your health concerns are normal or related to health anxiety, there are some signs to look for. It may be health anxiety if:

Minor symptoms quickly feel serious or life-threatening.
You focus on worst-case scenarios when looking up your symptoms.
You find yourself repeatedly checking your symptoms or searching for answers.
You obsess over bodily functions like heart rate or breathing, physical changes like skin blemishes or discomfort like headaches or stomach aches.
You frequently seek reassurance from your spouse, family, friends or doctors, but their reassurances provide only temporary or no relief.
When one health concern is resolved, a new symptom or severe worry about another condition takes its place.
You avoid going out and being around people because you’re afraid you’ll catch an illness.
You actively try to avoid going to the doctor, getting checkups or any kind of medical care.
Your worries are taking up a lot of your time and affecting your day-to-day life, work or relationships.

A health anxiety disorder can also cause you to feel ongoing worry about having or developing a serious illness, even when you go to the doctor and your test results are negative and physical exams suggest you don’t have one.

How Health Anxiety Can Affect Your Body

Everybody has some anxiety, but people who have anxiety disorders, including health anxiety, experience false alarms that make them feel anxious often, says Dr. Levin. “These false alarms trigger threat responses in the brain that release cortisol, a stress hormone, into the body.”

Stress, especially chronic stress, can affect all the systems in your body, including your:

Musculoskeletal system
Respiratory system
Cardiovascular system
Endocrine system
Gastrointestinal system
Nervous system
Reproductive system

When you’re anxious or stressed, your body’s “fight or flight” response kicks in to protect you from “danger,” but it can also cause physical symptoms, such as:

Tension in your muscles
Headaches
Chronic pain
Shortness of breath
Racing heart
Cardiovascular issues
Inflammation
Immune dysfunction
Nausea, acid reflux, heartburn and other digestive problems
Difficulty sleeping
Problems with libido and sexual function

“If you're experiencing that anxiety all the time, it can feel very uncomfortable before it's even causing any noticeable health problems,” says Dr. Levin. It can also become a feedback loop. Noticing a symptom, like a headache, increases anxiety, which triggers a stress response and can make the symptom feel worse, she says.

Health anxiety can also lead to unhealthy behaviors that cause other physical health problems. “You might feel anxious when your heart rate goes up and start avoiding the gym or exercise altogether,” says Dr. Levin. “That could definitely cause long-term physical harm.” You might also start using medications or supplements that you don’t need, which could cause harmful side effects. And if your health anxiety causes you to avoid going to the doctor, you could miss out on getting care for a medical issue that needs attention.

When to Seek Help and How to Manage Health Anxiety

If you have a recurring fear of serious illness that doesn’t go away – or you find yourself avoiding healthcare altogether – it may be time to speak with your primary care doctor or a mental health professional about health anxiety.

Dr. Levin suggests seeking help for health anxiety if worries about your health are:

Getting in the way of your ability to function in your daily life.
Interfering with your personal relationships.
Affecting your performance at work or making you miss work.
Causing you to go to the doctor too often or avoid going to the doctor.
Preventing you from taking care of your health.

“If you can’t resist the urge to keep looking up your symptoms, checking your body or calling your mom about your health worries multiple times a day – or if you’re going to the doctor and your test results keep coming back negative, but your anxiety goes away only very temporarily, these are signs you have health anxiety,” says Dr. Levin.

Repeated trips to the doctor aren’t going to help health anxiety. You need to work with someone who can address your anxious feelings. It may take time, but there are ways to keep health anxiety in check. Dr. Levin recommends cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). “There’s a lot of evidence that CBT is very effective at helping people with health anxiety change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors,” she says.

CBT for health anxiety focuses on reducing:

Worries about the severity of symptoms.
Misinterpreting bodily sensations.
Excessive body checking.
Reassurance-seeking behaviors.
Frequent or unnecessary healthcare appointments.

Medications, such as antidepressants, as well as mindfulness, meditation and relaxation techniques may also be recommended.

“It’s not that you should stop going to the doctor,” says Dr. Levin. “It’s about evaluating how serious the symptom is and allowing some time to see if it passes, then knowing when to seek help.” If you can ignore it, it may just go away on its own, she says. “If you wait it out and it gets more severe, then you should go to the doctor.”