Medicine and the media

The media loves "advising" us on how to look, what to do, why we should do it - especially in terms of medicine.  I mean medicine in its broadest sense of course, I doubt even 0.001% of journalists have any meaningful medical qualifications, even the special medical correspondants perhaps only having basic knowledge about what they are actually talking about. Anyway, basically, this makes room for some dangerous stuff to happen. For example, the media has widely stated that being fat is bad, this is not completely the case. Research has shown that some fat is good and can, for example make babies more intelligent or reduce heart disease.

So, not only can media make wide generalisations about medical matters, but this can make people feel peer pressured by the same media to drastically change their lifestyle to fit the so-called norm...which really isn't normal at all. The media likes to take things to the extremes and this doesn't go well with the theme of health.

If you don't understand the thing called science (specifically, psychoneuroimmunology), or find it the least interesting, then skip the next paragraph. Instead you can be ignorant of the fact that EMOTIONS CAN KILL YOU.

See what I did there? Catching your attention with a contraversial phrase, pretty much the aim of the media in order to get money. Remember, the media exists to make money, not inform you (the exception being nationalised media like the BBC).

Anyways, the science goes like this:

Stress --> cortisol hormone released.

Cortisol --> less white blood cells.

Less white blood cells --> suppressed immune system.

Which mean's you can become ill more easily than before, by that I don't just mean things like a cold, I also mean things like cancer and heart disease.

Not believing me? Ok, research shows that people at the bottom of a hierarchy (thus, the ones under most stress due to lack of life control) have much higher instances of heart disease. This effect is even greater then the effect of obesity and other illnesses known to be a cause of heart disease. Another bit of research showed that after a nuclear disaster, cancer rates in the area shot up - but there was no raise at all of radiation. That's right, ironically enough, people got cancer because they were stressed about getting cancer.

So, the long and short of it is...media stressing people out can make them ill, and contribute to fatal conditions.

Ok, enough of this depressing stuff, let's look at an instance where media advised people (mistakenly) to eat deadly mushrooms! Horray for research!

A few weeks back, a major Finnish newspaper had an article about picking and eating mushrooms, and the article mistakenly advised readers to pick and eat the Destroying Angel - which is (as it's name implies) not too good for ones body. The long and short of it is, four people ended up in a serious condition in hospital and one of those four is urgently requiring a liver transplant as a direct result of eating one of those mushrooms.

Sucks, doesn't it? But this just shows how the media can be so unqualified, not to mention have a lack of good research and common sense (Destroying Angel? Come on, what edible food would be called that?!) can lead to illness - and in the case of the person needing a transplant, waiting lists are so long I wouldn't be surprised if they died after a few years of painful agony.

Kids, don't believe everything you read. Adults, you should know anyway - though if you have no common sense then there really is no hope for you really, especially if your main source of information is dubiously researched information from unqualified typists and spin doctors.

This rant is inspired by me reading the book called Genome. It's interesting and cheap!