Learning you have cancer can be shocking. Sensory overload follows.

Fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, depression, helplessness and guilt can all be in the mix.

Making that initial onslaught worse, a new University of Florida study found, is that most people newly diagnosed with cancer are met with a flood of misinformation.

Ninety-three percent of such patients in the Florida study said they had seen or heard spurious claims about cancer cures.

Even if you don’t have a cancer diagnosis, you have likely seen it yourself. Wear crystals next to your body, one touts. Follow an alkaline diet, a friend suggests. A Facebook posts says aromatherapy will cure you. Or enemas. Or vitamin C. Or polarity therapy.

The list is as lengthy as it is ridiculous. And patients are vulnerable to such claims because most of us want to live as long as we can.

One takeaway from the study is that doctors should assume a new cancer patient has seen or heard misinformation ¾ rather than hope they haven’t. Bad health information can prevent people from getting treatment that has been studied for safety and effectiveness.

The researchers said they are working to pilot an “information prescription” to steer patients to sources of evidence-based information about cancer, like the American Cancer Society.

Notably, the study found that patients were most often exposed to misinformation secondhand, rather than looking for it. Our online algorithms know us and dictate much of what we see.

So, if you’re trying to understand how to deal with cancer, take everything you read with a grain of salt. And if something seems too good to be true, ask your doctor.