Google has a history of walking into different sectors and acquiring mass amounts of data, but its most recent acquisition of the Ascension hospital network meant they had just bought the health records of millions of Americans. But should Google legally be allowed the buy health details without the patient’s consent?
Read more
Recent studies have found that NHS administrative errors are a lot more frequent than previously thought and they are causing appalling levels of harm. These errors consist of anything from incorrect medication being prescribed to operating on the wrong person. It is shocking to think that errors like this, which are so easily avoidable are still happening on a daily basis.
Read more
Recent news articles have been reporting on the GPs vote at the Conference of England Local Medical Committee (LMC). The main vote that has gained media attraction is Motion Numer 9, which is the removal of contractual obligations for home visits, which was voted in favour by 54%.
Read more
For many years the NHS has been used a pawn in political games and the upcoming election is no exception. With Labour’s discovery of the ‘NHS for sale’ dossier, there has been a huge debate around the NHS being vulnerable to privatisation and secret deals with Trump to sell off parts of the NHS.
Recent studies have found that NHS administrative errors are a lot more frequent than previously thought and they are causing appalling levels of harm. These errors consist of anything from incorrect medication being prescribed to operating on the wrong person. It is shocking to think that errors like this, which are so easily avoidable are still happening on a daily basis.
Read more
In the last article, I wrote about some of the issues surrounding alcohol; including fitness, calories, cancer, the brain, and even sex and reproduction. In this second part on the subject of Dry January, I will delve into five more:
The effects of alcohol on the cardiovascular system are widely researched and include the following:
Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a leading result of excessive alcohol consumption and leads to many less than desirable consequences, such as heart attack and stroke. Read more
The turn of every new year brings with it a barrage of resolutions and a surplus of best-intentioned gym-goers.
The new year also has another health-related tradition, that of the “Dry January” challenges. This is a campaign designed and promoted by Alcohol Change UK to raise awareness of the effects of alcohol.
The event started back in 2004 and the idea is as the name suggests — to go alcohol-free for the full 31 days of January. This can be done in promotion of the charitable organisation or simply as an acknowledgement to your own wellbeing.
The subject of alcohol and health is quite extensive, so I’ll break this up into two parts and will try to cover the majority of the topic within these. First of all is the effects of alcohol on physical activities. Read more
William James, an American psychologist was a leading thinker of the late nineteenth century and one of the most influential U.S. philosophers. Labelled as the “Father of American psychology” he wrote back in 1890 —
“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”
Social skills are formed through face-to-face interactions with others from birth, such as infants with their parents and siblings, and children with their peers at nursery and school. But there is a growing concern that the use of social media is effectively displacing the way the new generation is developing their peer to peer social skill-set throughout adolescence. The question is whether these digital stimuli have the potential to influence the risk of behavioural addiction.
University College London psychiatrist Dr Michael Bloomfield states: “Adolescence is a critical period for a person’s development, particularly as our brains go through important changes during our teenage years.”
Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, which is a peer-reviewed medical journal covering research in psychiatry and neurology, released an in-depth article into the Maturation of the adolescent brain. It stated:
“It is well established that the brain undergoes a “rewiring” process that is not complete until approximately 25 years of age… The nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain’s reward system located within the limbic system, is the area that processes information related to motivation and reward. Brain imaging has shown that the nucleus accumbens is highly sensitive in adolescents, sending out impulses to act when faced with the opportunity to obtain something desirable.”
Part of the appeal for these attention-seeking businesses are the ‘rewards’ they offer; push notifications of the number of ‘likes’ on the user’s post for example. These are types of rapid reward cycles which reinforce the habit-forming actions of their users, guaranteeing they keep coming back time and time again.
An opposing opinion is that perhaps it is not the general use of digital media but more the content and context that is influential since some uses of digital technologies actually do improve multitasking skills, working memory, and fluid intelligence- which is one’s problem-solving ability.
Whether we use the technology to connect with loved ones throughout the day for that familial interaction and support, or if our usage is related entirely to our curiosity and inclination to compare our lives to the often highly filtered and sheltered lives of others, there is a stark contrast to the online environment we expose ourselves to. With the more astute and measured perspective of an adult, these potentially negative factors may not be such an ‘influence’ (as these ‘influencers’ are named). But for younger, less pragmatic users, these issues will have a much greater impact on their self-esteem and value.
A study into the issue was conducted by University at Albany psychologist, Julia Hormes. She led a team of three researchers in assessing the addictive nature of social media — specifically Facebook. She states that-
“New notifications or the latest content on your newsfeed acts as a reward. Not being able to predict when new content is posted encourages us to check back frequently,”
The big players profit from their user-base through targeted advertising which means this genuinely becomes an economy driven by control over our attention. The value of our attention is enhanced by its finite availability, thus the demand and need for those in this market to compete.
With the emergence of these critical communication technologies, there is bound to be some fraction of users who will show addictive behaviour. If someone is displaying unbalanced behavioural habits, whose responsibility is that?- It would certainly be in the platform provider’s interest to afford some safeguarding within their services since they know exactly how much you are using their product and the detrimental effect of reliance on them.
Alex Marshall CPsychol, Forensic Psychologist, provided an overview of the subject when he observed-
“There is a lot of research into adolescents being vulnerable to entrenchment in a particular lifestyle that otherwise would be adolescence-limited, but failure to integrate (amongst other factors) prolongs behaviour or steers them off onto a trajectory that they otherwise weren’t destined towards biologically or socially.”
Ultimately, nobody knows the consequences these digital media phenomena will have on modern life and to some level, we are all part of a long-term social experiment to find the answer.
By Medicalchain’s Tim Robinson
