One of the most terrifying experiences of my life was when my oldest child was seven months old and she had croup, where the upper airway becomes swollen because of a virus. By the time my mother and I rushed her to the children’s hospital she was in severe respiratory distress and went straight from triage to get the life-saving medication she needed to help her to breathe.

Seven years later, I can still conjure the terror of seeing my baby struggling to breathe.

Anyone can set themselves up as a health influencer, but beware of advice from those unqualified to provide it. Credit:istock

This is why I felt particularly outraged when I saw a company using testimonials from parents to claim that their salt therapy can treat problems with breathing, including children with asthma, croup and bronchiolitis. This is despite a complete lack of evidence that salt therapy has any impact at all on these conditions.

For those of us regulated health practitioners, like doctors, nurses and physiotherapists who are active in sharing health information with the public we have to be incredibly careful how we present information. Due to privacy, we can’t share stories about our patients without their express permission, we can’t claim that our treatments work better than others, we can’t use testimonials, because a testimonial is the experience of only one person and perhaps there were ten others who got no benefit at all.