Electronic devices have many benefits for human beings, but their excessive use produces negative and silent conditions that affect physical and mental health, and are known as technopathies, which is a term that is gaining more and more ground.
Technopathies refer to the abuse of smartphones, tablets, computers, and other devices. They are risk factors for health because they combine digital hyperconnection and a sedentary lifestyle that lead to circulatory and respiratory problems, as well as musculoskeletal and mental problems.
These 3.0 diseases or diseases caused by technology group together all abnormal mental behavior in the use of connection methods linked to communication and information technologies (ICT), which translate into insomnia, anxiety and obsession with their use, and stress. for all the content that these tools offer.
They can be classified into two types. The first, mental, is described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) because it promotes a pattern of addiction similar to gambling and substances; The best known is the vamping technology, which is hyperconnection to digital devices and causes insomnia.
Another is the phubbing or ningufoneo, which is the rejection and ignorance towards other people who are around for only being attentive to smartphones. Likewise, smombies, which is carrying out activities without paying attention because they are always connected to these devices, and nomophobia, which is the need to remain constantly connected no matter what the moment.
The second type are the physical conditions that leave these behaviors such as the text-neck, which summarizes the ailments in the cervical area due to the constant use and adoption of incorrect postures with the telephone and others.
This category also includes tendinitis disorders, carpal tunnel syndromes and lumbar myofascial syndromes, as well as childhood obesity and the so-called whatasappitis, which refers to seamstress osteoarthritis or rhizarthrosis.
Disturbance
Christian Méndez Verástegui, orthopedic surgeon and traumatologist at the Miguel Pérez Carreño hospital in the city of Caracas, told the Últimas Noticias team that the injuries caused by these technopathies have a great impact on the health of patients, progressively altering their activities. of daily life.
He adds that this has repercussions on his personal and work development, and contributes to the development of psychological alterations “that will enhance the discomfort and its evolution, which in the end worsen and the patient enters a dangerous vicious circle that becomes chronic,” he says.
For his part, Ezequiel Uribe, psychiatrist, teacher and researcher in the department of neurophysiology at the University of Carabobo, explains that those who establish a dependent relationship with smartphones, which is the device most used by people, can experience brain changes with withdrawal attempts when the cell phone runs out of charge or the individual is doing other tasks related to their obligations.
In addition, he points out that when it reaches a level of chronic anxiety, it ends up generating sleep loss because the devices create daytime anxiety, since the anxiety and sleep circuits are activated.
In relation to this, the specialist emphasizes that those who choose to use these elements during the night hours and not during the day as a way to distract the mind from daily situations while trying to consolidate sleep, make a mistake, since the light emitted by electric lights and their proximity to the eyes cause a negative effect, especially if they do so with the light in the room turned off.
He points out that this causes the suprachiasmatic nuclei to stimulate the brain to generate the hormone orexin, which in turn activates the ascending reticular system that produces a sensation of wakefulness. This process is what should happen during the day, but its use at night causes the person to be unable to sleep.
Treatments
Psychiatrist Uribe explains that the treatments for these conditions, from the mental point of view, are handled in the same way as addictions and if the patient does not have previous admission criteria, the control is outpatient with pharmacological prescriptions and behavioral cognitive therapies.
However, there are extreme cases already mentioned in which withdrawal is severe and even presents with vasovagal symptoms and requires hospitalization.
Physically, Méndez added that patient management is done in a multidisciplinary manner and in the case of serious injuries that do not improve with medical treatment for a reasonable time, it is likely that the patient will need surgical treatment.
He emphasizes that it is always important to go to a traumatologist so that he guides the patient properly and the treatment is effective.
