Having more gadgets may endanger your life

Having more gadgets may endanger your life

Imagine a 21st Century without television, radio, computer, mobile phones, iPods and other gadgets. Boring, isn‘t it? These gadgets have become ubiquitous and almost indispensable.

Through television, radio and the Internet, we get information about happenings in other parts of the world. We use the mobile phone to keep in touch with our relatives and friends. Often, we release pent up frustrations by listening to music from our phones, iPods, MP3 players among other gadgets. Without a doubt, these gadgets have become necessities in today’s fast-paced information age.

But findings from different studies suggest that increasing your gadgets may mean increasing your sorrows. For instance, the February 5, 2006 edition of Australia’s The Age newspapers reported a study which found that cell phones were depriving teens and school children of sleep and as such, making them grumpy and disadvantaged at school the following day.

In a sample survey of 213 boys and 193 girls, 42 per cent of boys and 40 per cent of girls were found to be chronically sleep deprived to the extent that it would impair their concentration in school.

The newspaper quoted Andrew Fuller, the clinical psychologist who conducted the study, as saying that many children lost precious sleep because they stayed up late into the night, sending text messages to friends.

Fuller, who is also an education expert, said that lack of sleep could have serious effect on students’ ability to learn and retain information at school the following day.

“The amount of sleep you have directly relates to how much serotonin you have and how vulnerable to stress you are. It means they get less deep sleep and less dream sleep. Sleep helps consolidate long-term memory, it has a big role in learning,” he said.

Scientists have also warned of that uncontrolled use of the Internet may lead to insomnia and later, mental illness. This, thus, is bad news for pathological late night Internet users who forgo their sleep so as to browse the web and chat with their friends on social networking sites.

Findings from a study published earlier this year in the journal, Sleep, suggested that such sleep deprivation could explain the startling increase in mental illness among young people in the recent decades.

The researchers surveyed 20,000 people, aged between 17 and 24 years, and found that those who slept fewer than five hours a night were three times more likely than normal sleepers to become psychologically distressed in the following year.

Prof. Nicholas Glozier, who led the research, was quoted by the Mail of London as saying, “Sleep disturbance and in particular, insomnia is a predictor of later development of depression and possibly anxiety.”

A consultant psychiatrist at the Ladoke Akintola University Teaching Hospital, Osogbo, Osun State, Dr. Adeoye Oyewole, agreed that pathological browsing could lead to mental illness.

He said, “Sleep deprivation, experimentally, has been found to cause people to hear voices of unseen individuals. And a combination of addictive properties of the Internet plus sleep deprivation can lead to mental illness,” he said.

Researchers at the Epidemiology Unit of the United Kingdom’s Medical Research Council, in June, found that for every hour spent watching TV per day, an individual’s risk of death from heart disease increased by seven per cent, even after risk factors such as lack of exercise, smoking, obesity and poor diet had been taken into account.

The researchers, for almost a decade, studied 13,197 middle-aged, healthy men and women in Norfolk, England. In that time, 373 of the participants died from heart disease, according to the findings published in June in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

According to the Mail of London, the researchers estimated that 30 of these deaths could have been prevented if people had reduced their TV viewing time from the UK average of four hours per day to just one hour.

Scientists have also warned that laptops when placed on the thighs while in use can cause “irreversible or partially reversible changes” in the reproductive organs of men.

According to the study, Increase in scrotal temperature in laptop computer users, published in the December 2004 edition of the journal, Human Reproduction, the heat generated by a laptop and the position of the thighs that is needed to balance the computer lead to higher temperatures around a man’s genitals and over time can result in low sperm count.

The researchers from the State University of New York, Stonybrook, warned that teenage boys and young men should limit the use of computers on their laps because years of heavy laptop use might cause irreversible or partially reversible changes in male reproductive function. They advised young men to use laptops as desktop and also consider cutting the time they spend working with laptops on their laps because of the possible long-term damage to their fertility.

A consultant physician at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Cross River State, Dr. Tony Aluka, confirmed that balancing a laptop on the laps when working can lead to low sperm count.

He said, “The laptop generates heat. If a man balances it on his laps when working, the heat it generates will definitely increase the temperature around the testicles. And this may, overtime, reduce spermatogenesis and lead to low sperm count and possible infertility.”

While not suggesting that you should throw away your useful gadgets, the findings suggest that more care should be taken in the use of gadgets.


 Source:http://www.punchng.com