The skeptical cardiologist has been evaluating a demo version of AliveCor’s new KardiaMobile 6L. I have been a huge advocate of Kardia’s single lead ECG and use it with great success in dozens of my afib patients. I’ve written about how this personal ECG monitoring empowers patients and providers and is a crucial component of…
Thanks Doctor for the ECG history lesson and for sharing your insights.
And congratulations on the Stanley Cup!
At the end of your life, what will have more meaning to you? Will it be the thousands of filtered images you spent “liking” on social media or the real-life moments you spent with loved ones? Realize that every single moment you spend looking at your phone instead of the face of your loved one is a missed opportunity of having a real connection. Your support group in life should consist of the interconnected arms of the real people you know encircling you with love, not the sporadic connectivity of the world wide web.
via Break Free From The Stimulation Nation — Dr. Eric Perry, PhD
If your attention gets diverted in different directions by smartphones and other digital devices, take note: Media multitasking has now been linked to obesity.
Digital device overload linked to obesity risk
Let’s order lunch in!
Results Of the 2441 children included in the analysis, 1169 (47.9%) were boys. A random-intercepts, cross-lagged panel model revealed that higher levels of screen time at 24 and 36 months were significantly associated with poorer performance on developmental screening tests at 36 months (β, −0.08; 95% CI, −0.13 to −0.02) and 60 months (β, −0.06; 95% CI, −0.13 to −0.02), respectively. These within-person (time-varying) associations statistically controlled for between-person (stable) differences.
Conclusions and Relevance The results of this study support the directional association between screen time and child development. Recommendations include encouraging family media plans, as well as managing screen time, to offset the potential consequences of excess use.
JAMA article here.
Published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, the most recent study linking poor mental health conditions to social media use has added even more evidence to back up the theory. The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania intentionally designed their experiment to be more comprehensive than previous studies on the topic. Rather than relying on short-term lab data or self-reported questionnaires, they recruited 143 undergraduate students to share screenshots of their Phone battery screens over a week to collect data on how much they were using social media apps including Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.
Earlier this year I felt it was important to Put The Phone Down….
With increasing scientific evidence you need to put the phone away.
Unless you want a self-imposed endless cycle of depression and misery.
There’s always Wellbutrin.
“Think about how difficult it must be to read even five pages of an 800-page college textbook when you’ve been used to spending most of your time switching between one digital activity and another in a matter of seconds,” she added. “It really highlights the challenges students and faculty both face in the current era.”
My random thoughts:
There is a link to the full study in the source article.
In mice.
Confirming and extending previous observations, the researchers showed that prolonged social isolation leads to a broad array of behavioral changes in mice. These include increased aggressiveness towards unfamiliar mice, persistent fear, and hypersensitivity to threatening stimuli. For example, when encountering a threatening stimulus, mice that have been socially isolated remain frozen in place long after the threat has passed, whereas normal mice stop freezing soon after the threat is removed. These effects are seen when mice are subjected to two weeks of social isolation, but not to short-term social isolation — 24 hours — suggesting that the observed changes in aggression and fear responses require chronic isolation.
Though the work was done in mice, it has potential implications for understanding how chronic stress affects humans.
Get out of the house. Socialize with friends and family. Leave the cell phone at home.
Social media is not social. It’s a serious public health problem for the brainwashed masses with addictive behaviors.
Read the source article here.
Recent research and clinical psychologists now suggest that some adolescents are engaging in a newer form of self-aggression — digital self-harm. They’re anonymously posting mean and derogatory comments about themselves on social media.
Digital self-harm.
Parents – take the phone away.
Very interesting article. HT to naked capitalism.
lifeunderwriter.net 
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