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5 Side Effects To Modern Inventions

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In the past couple of decades, the world has seen a monumental explosion in the technology domain. It’s not just that now we have touchscreen phones all of sudden or almost sentient little robots that are silently plotting to overcome humankind and keep us in a zoo. Many other discoveries in a variety of fields have revolutionized everything we know: in medicine, in beauty, in the food industry, in science and yada yada. Most, if not all, of these astonishing creations have been made with nothing but the best of intentions and with the hopes that, perhaps, they will prove useful and they will aid us in making life just a little bit easier. While that’s partly true, the wonders of modern technology don’t come without a price. Out of a whole ocean of available content and creations, we chose 5 Side Effects To Modern Inventions that might make you wonder whether spawning them was a good idea.

1. The Snooze Button

Side Effects To Modern Inventions - The Snooze Button

How it affects us: by completely tearing to pieces our already shaky sleep schedule.

Alarms are the enemy of every person who is socially forcibly ejected out of the comfort of their bed in order to spend hours doing various tasks in exchange for rewards (money, basically; unless you’re in school, in which case, condolences). Which is why, in order to counterattack the brutality of it, humankind decided to invent the snooze button. Simply pressing it will silence the malevolent jazzy tune that’s trying to split us away from the homely activity of sleeping, and will secure us a few more minutes together with the Sandman. However, this seems to be only making things worse.

Whenever we wake up, our bodies are the stage of several chemical processes that involve reducing the amount of serotonin in our bloodstream and boosting dopamine. Our ever so fragile bodies are constructed in a way that allows us to learn the pattern of our sleep schedule, to the point when we’ll be able to naturally wake up at a certain hour without having to rely on naturetunes.mp3 blasting through our heads. But since there is basically no one on Earth who consistently goes to bed and wakes up at the exact same hours, it turns out that we do need naturetunes.mp3 after all. Whenever we hit the snooze button, drift back to the land of dreams and wake up again, our bodies are forced to retain and release said substances again, and again, and again.

Given that we basically turn into a bank of substance transactions every morning, there’s no surprise that we wake up cranky and ready to commit murder. Next time you think about snoozing, consider that as difficult is may sound, immediately waking up will be more beneficial for your mind and body.

2. Automatic Hand Dryers

Hand Dryers Surprisingly Have One Of The Side Effects To Modern Inventions

How they affect us: by basically projecting every bacteria in the world in our faces.

How many trees do we have to kill in order to properly wipe our hands after the sanitizing process of washing our hands? That’s what someone, somewhere, sometime must have thought when they came up with the automatic hand dryers. Tired of committing flora genocide, humans hammered on the walls of every respectable bathroom a box that blows hot hair on our hands once every two seconds, by constantly shutting down and forcing us to bend and flex around it in our attempts to find where those annoying sensors are hidden.

However, even though trees are probably joyously living their tree lives without the worry of being butchered for the sake of human biology, we shouldn’t hop in on the celebration too soon. According to some people who decided that analyzing hand dryers is something they genuinely want to do, these automatic boxes do more harm than good. By blowing air, they basically suck in all the bacteria scattered around the bathroom into a foul tornado that rapidly grows thanks to the warmth of the jet, and all of it gets catapulted on our frontal body parts.

3. Pain Relievers


Side Effects To Modern Inventions Include Those Of Pain RelieversHow they affect us: by essentially sucking all the joy out of us until we’re left with the emotional range of a cucumber.

You know what they say about emotional pain being a much harsher thing to withstand than physical one? Oh, man, wouldn’t it be the best thing ever if we could dull out our broken hearts as quickly as we can recover from accidentally grabbing tightly on a steaming hot curling iron? Good news: we can.

Nathan DeWall from the University of Kentucky conducted in 2009 an experiment that showed that Tylenol, everyone’s number one go-to choice for all pill popping needs, is actually excellent at easing the pain of social rejection, too. This is essentially saying that a good dose of Tylenol is going to help both with the pain of landing on your face after an unsuccessful back flip into a frozen lake, and the pain of having your friends film it and post it on YouTube.

So, what’s so bad about this? What’s bad is that it’s been recently proven that by dulling out our emotions, we are also alienating our positive ones, making us less susceptible to random explosions of overwhelming glee. Come to think of it, in the long run, is mending a broken heart worth not being able to fully enjoy a Cats Doing Adorable Things video?

4. Cellphones

Cellphones Are Included In The Side Effects To Modern Inventions

How they affect us: how don’t they affect us?

Cellphones are considered to be the number one obstacle in human evolution, the spawns of the lowest layers of Hell. If you thought that there hasn’t been an aspect about our favorite portable devices that hasn’t been turned upside down and demonized in every possible way, think again. Apparently, cellphones are incredibly evil even when we aren’t using them.

The journal Social Psychology thought that there wasn’t enough cellphone bashing in the world, so they conducted an experiment to further prove their cause. They brought in a classroom several undergrad psych students, told them to solve some math exercises and had the teacher randomly leave the class and “accidentally” leave behind his cellphone. The aftermath was that the students performed worse during their math exercises, because if it weren’t for the cellphone, they would have definitely emerged from this experiment infallible Pythagorean masterminds.

It seems that the simple presence of a cellphone subconsciously makes us think of all the social media and conversations we are being kept away from. Fair enough. Also, if you’re thinking of trying to keep your phone as far away as possible from you from now on and opt for a set of Bluetooth headphones, it seems like the alternative is just as distracting, if not more.

5. Workout Clothes

Side Effects To Modern Inventions - Synthetic Workout Clothes

How they affect us: by making us reek like a sack of rotten eggs forgotten in a dumpster for thirty years.

Let’s be honest here, no matter how honorable and beneficial physical activity is, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing thing out there. By the end of a workout routine, most of us are left breathlessly trying to stop our lungs from getting ejected out of our chests, and drenched in sweat from areas we didn’t even know could sweat. Believe it or not, it could be worse.

When deciding what outfit you’re going to wear when basking in the glory of body toning activities, you might want to leave synthetic clothes out of the equation. Researchers from the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology took it upon themselves to unleash the world’s foulest smell by having people dressed in various fabrics exercise. They took the clothes, left them in a distant corner overnight to capture the fearful odor as best as they could, then had a probably harshly underpaid employee sniff them and rank them in a hierarchy of filthiness. The results showed that the clothes made from a material such as polyester were the winners.

Turns out that, ultimately, no matter how ugly looking a cotton tracksuit might be, at least it won’t leave a trail of inhuman scents behind you when you leave the gym.

Alright, maybe these side effects are nothing worrisome or of exceptional proportions. But can you imagine what all of them combined can do to us? Regardless, it’s not news that every good thing must come for a price. After all, the world revolves around the concept of equivalent exchange. And this is how we got 5 Side Effects To Modern Inventions.

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

7 Interesting Human Senses You Had No Idea Existed

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When someone tells you: You have a sixth sense, chances are that things like foreseeing, being able to sense undead or levitating will come to mind. What many people do not know is that the human senses are not limited to five. Sure, these five are the “mainstream” ones, so to say, but there are many more that you are using on a daily basis. It seems only natural that people would have an extensive palette of senses, especially considering that we are talking about such complex beings. Let’s take a look at 7 senses that you are probably using on a daily basis, but had no idea:

  1. When it’s cold outside, you shiver, and when it’s too warm, you sweat. Did you know that this has nothing to do with the sense of touch, and it is actually a sense in its own right? Yes, we are talking about thermoception: the sense of hot and cold. It operates with the help of thermo-receptors from the skin, and it helps us also adjust our temperature to the environment .

  1. Magneto is not the only one that can sense and manipulate magnetic object around him. Granted, we can’t make pots fly in think air, but our body is capable of figuring out a direction based on the Earth’s magnetic fields. I think this is very interesting. Magnetoreception is an intriguing sense indeed. The mystery around it is the fact that we do not know to what extent it can be harnessed. While some people have an uncanny sense of direction, others are less oriented. Magnetoreception is also very developed among bees, birds and cows.

human senses

  1. Itching is not just some annoying feeling you get from time to time, and it has little to do with the sense of touch. It is actually completely separate from it. When you itch, your body tells you that there is something wrong with the affected area. It may be nothing more than dry skin, but it could also be a bug that you are trying to get off. Either way, itching is the perfect way of attracting attention to a problematic area of the body.

  1. Chronoception is governed by the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which also controls the circadian rhythms. Studies have shown that younger people are especially good with perception of time. Chronoception is yet another sense that you probably did not know you had, and it is extremely important, because the ability to perceive the passing of time can help you organize your life more efficiently.

human senses

  1. There is one moment during a meal when you feel that you can’t eat any more. That is when people usually take a deep breath, and continue to stuff their faces. That moment indicates that you no longer need to eat, because you are full. Your body is letting you know that you have reached capacity. Did you know that this is also a sense? It is called the sense of fullness, and it helps the body catch up with what the body is doing.

  1. Number six on our list of senses is Proprioception, undoubtedly one of the most important human senses. Most of us take it for granted, day after day, but when we are left without it, we find even the most trivial of tasks, impossible. Prioriception is essentially the sense of where your arms and legs are, in relation to the rest of your body and surroundings. In other words, it enables you to interact with things around you, efficiently.

human senses

  1. The last sense that we would like to present to you is nociception. It is not one of the most beloved senses, because it refers to ability of your body to feel pain. Many scientists consider that it should be lumped in with touch, but it is so very different from it, that it would be impossible. As a matter of fact, some doctors actually suggest dividing it into pain located in the skin, the bones and the organs themselves. Although nobody wants to be in pain, you might want to feel it, since there are obvious dangers without it. Pain is basically a symptom of something wrong in your body, if you don’t feel it, you will never know how your health is.

The Five Most Interesting Medical Conditions

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Medicine has always been fascinating for most people and although some types of cases are fairly frequent, there are those conditions that only seem to occur once in a blue moon. Startling both doctors and patients, such ailments are by no means easily treated (if they have a treatment at all) and leave those confronted with them bot baffled and at an impossibility to manage. Here are some interesting medical cases that you may find worth reading:

1. Fibrodysplasia osificans progresiva(Stone Man’s Disease)

With only eight hundred cases confirmed worldwide, this disease belongs to the rarest and most incapacitating conditions out there. Patients experience bone growth in place of tendons and muscle (and generally, where connective tissue is found) so that movement is restricted progressively. This ailment can go as far as to turn patients into living statues (they can grow a second skeleton) although their inner organs remain perfectly healthy since they are composed of other types of muscle fibers.

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2. Cotard’s Syndrome

This mental disorder also called “Walking Corpse Syndrome” represents and ailment where patients hold the delusional belief that they are dead (nihilistic delusions that are either literal or figurative but that have the sufferer convinced that he or she is putrefying, has lost his organs or blood and is no longer among the living). There are also rare described instances where patients suffer delusions of immortality. Although the DSM-IV and the ICD 10 (international classifications of mental disease guides) do not recognize Cotard’s Syndrome, there are several treatment options, where electroconvulsive therapy seems to work best.

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3. Neonatal Progeroid Syndrome

Progeroid syndromes represent a class of ailments that go hand in hand with premature aging, and believe it or not, there are forms of this disease that can cause accelerated fat loss as well as tissue degeneration. There are patients who are still being investigated but are believed to belong to a class of this disease and who need to eat every fifteen minutes so as to stay alive . In spite of 60 meals a day, there are women suffering from this disease who absolutely can’t gain weight regardless of the quantities of food they take in (sometimes more tan 8000 calories).

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4. Progeria (Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome)

Another extremely rare genetic disease, progeria represents one of the ailments whose marking symptoms are aging at very early ages and occurs once every 8 million births. Patients rarely live past their teen years, although there have been reported cases of sufferers living past the normal expected age. Sufferers age at eight times the normal rate so that, by the time they are 12-13 patients have already died from heart attacks, strokes or other age related illnesses.

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5. Bark Skin Disorder

Most of us are absolutely appalled by a single wart that might make his way on or skin, but there are some cases of warts appearing across entire limbs, across faces and turning people into what seems to be a treant. As weird as it may seem, epidermodysplasia verruciformis is as real as it gets and represent a disease where the Human Papiloma Virus spreads uncontrolled across the skin of patients. There is also an immune system defect that is being considered in the parthenogenesis of this illness, but there are patients who require more than 2 surgeries per year if they are to remove these growths that keep on growing back.

tree-man-2 tree-man-warts_1210514atree-man-2tree-man-2

There are countless more diseases that can seem both horrific and interesting to the beholder, but the truth is that we will never comprehend the level of stress and pain that patients suffering such illnesses feel, although we can become more understanding by getting acquainted with the illness itself.

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