YouTube Videos Might Help Ease Form of Vertigo

HealthDay – 1 hr 41 mins ago MONDAY, July 23 (HealthDay News) -- Videos posted on YouTube might come to the rescue of people suffering from a common cause of vertigo, a new study shows.

Vertigo is the sensation that everything around you is moving or spinning, even though you're stationary.

This study looked at benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), an inner ear disorder that is a common cause of this type of dizziness. It often goes untreated by doctors even though it's easily and quickly remedied with a simple technique called the Epley maneuver.

BPPV occurs when loose calcium carbonate crystals move into the sensing tubes of the inner ear. The maneuver uses gravity to move the calcium crystals out of the sensing tube and into another inner chamber of the ear, where they do not cause symptoms.

U.S. researchers found that accurate video demonstrations of the maneuver are readily available on YouTube, according to the study in the July 24 issue of the journal Neurology.

"It was good to see that the video with the most hits was the one developed by the American Academy of Neurology when it published its guideline recommending the use of the Epley maneuver in 2008 and then posted on YouTube by a lay person," study author Dr. Kevin Kerber, of the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, said in a journal news release.

"But it was also good that the majority of the videos demonstrated the maneuver accurately," he added.

The researchers also found that some comments accompanying the videos show that health care providers are using the videos as a prescribed treatment for BPPV or to help patients learn the Epley maneuver.

"One shortcoming of the videos was that they did not include information on how to diagnose BPPV, and some of the comments indicate that people who do not have BPPV may be trying these maneuvers because of dizziness from other causes," Kerber said. "Despite this, we found it encouraging to think that YouTube could be used to disseminate information about this maneuver and educate more people about how to treat this disorder."

Another expert agreed that a physician's diagnosis is key.

"The Epley Maneuver is, indeed, an effective treatment for BPPV

View the Original article

Technology’s benefits for teens vs. YouTube fights, cyber-harassment, webcam spying

D.C. public schools: Lottery results reveal a new set of popular kidsMaclaren files for bankruptcy and a stereotype goes down with itWhat parents can learn when a child is rejected from schoolGeneration Collaboration: Consulting your kids on where to shop, what to buyStories By DateFull Monthly Archive Posted at 01:58 PM ET, 03/07/2012By Janice D'Arcy

The Pew Research Center and Elon University have released a survey of Internet experts that found just over half of them believe that the connectivity of teens today will ultimately benefit them. The optimists think kids can now access human knowledge at a greater speed and to a greater extent than ever before, according to the survey.

But at the same time, the downsides of this connectivity are on display across the country, including a courtroom in New Jersey, a playground in Massachusetts, and recent cases in this region.

Last week, I wrote about a fight between girls at Montgomery County’s Churchill High that was briefly posted on YouTube. The Post’s Donna St. George recently wrote about a boy in Calvert County who was so humiliated by the broadcasting of a fight he was involved in that he’s left school altogether.

Meanwhile, the trial of Dharun Ravi in New Jersey is currently fusing “parental anxieties about the hidden worlds of teen-age computing, teen-age sex, and teen-age unkindness,” the New Yorker’s Ian Parker writes in a recent piece that details the high-profile trial.

Ravi is on trial for intimidating and invading the privacy of his Rutgers roommate Tyler Clementi. He faces ten years in prison.

The case stems from a night when Ravi rigged his webcam so that he could remotely spy on his roommate, who was gay, and another man. Ravi shared what he saw with a friend, tweeted about it and later planned to hold an online party to spy on the roommate again.

Clementi discovered the spying. He then killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

The Ravi case is a legally complicated one and it remains unclear how closely Clementi’s suicide can be tied to the cyber-spying. Neither it nor the other incidents discount what the experts polled by Pew had to say about the potential of technology in kids’ lives.

What the incidents do suggest is that technology is also amplifying the hardest parts of adolescence — the cruelty, the betrayals, the embarrassments. It’s hard to feel worldly when the entire universe you occupy has witnessed your humiliation.

The issue for parents is how to help kids use technology for its benefits and avoid its more nefarious temptations. Is the answer to engage kids in more conversations about technology? Is it to monitor them more? Is it to shoot their laptops?

We are supposed to be the helicopter-parent generation, no? Where are we on this?

Related Content:

Social media, teens, parents and whether to ‘friend’

Combating cyber bullying and technology’s downside

Will YouTube make us better parents?

By Janice D'Arcy 

View the Original article