Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Whatsappitis: An inflammatory chat

It's finally official.
Whatsapp, the most popular social interacting messaging system has carved a niche for itself. It has been honored by the renowned medical journal, Lancet, by dedicating an illness to this chat service. 

Whatsappitis is what it has been called. 
A 34 yr old doc developed severe pain in both her wrists
on Christmas Eve due to constant messaging with both her thumbs on Whatsapp for a period of 6 hrs. The diagnosis was bilateral extensor pollicis longus tendinitis of the thumb. She was treated with analgesics and advised rest to the wrists which she failed to follow since she was again on duty on New Year's Eve and whatsapping again. 

In 1990, Nintendinitis, a similar term was coined for video games related strain injuries. 

Heavy cellphone users have earlier been found to suffer from ringxietyPhantom ringing or Phantom vibration syndrome, a phenomenon in which users imagine their phone ringing or feel it vibrate when it actually doesn't. 

Tenosynovitis caused by texting with mobile phones could well be an emerging disease. 

So, WhatsAppitis is to smartphones as Carpal tunnel syndrome is to keyboard. 

3 comments:

  1. Yes its very true.
    Being on whatsapp continuesly develop create a lots of pain in our wrist plus in shoulders also while using it on laying down

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  2. farida patanwala21 May 2014 at 23:53

    Using watsapp to a homemaker like me would say it distracts our focus on concentrating on imp work at home n we sit wt it to c who has replied or why the x person has not yet read the chat or why xy person is yet online ect which r useless issues not helping us in any way.we strain our eyes too

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  3. Very interesting. Everything has pros and cons. Same is true for watsapp. Overuse of anything causes harm even though initially we may enjoy it.

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