The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Sundance opens door on Chinese Web junkie detox camps Posted: 24 Jan 2014 05:07 PM PST With 24 million young people spending more than six hours a day online, China is the first country in the world to recognise Web dependency as a medical condition, according to "Web Junkie", in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Filmmakers Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia gained access to one of some 400 Chinese detox centers for adolescents aged 13-18 considered as addicted, notably to online videogames. "China is the first country to declare Internet addiction as a clinical disorder and to take action," Medalia told AFP. Their film focuses on three children sent by their parents to the centre. For a month, the three boys – no girls were interviewed for the documentary – alternate military obstacle courses, medical treatment and family therapy, at a cost of 10,000 yuan (RM5,511), twice the average monthly salary in Beijing. "These parents are really desperate. They bring their kids there because it's their last resort, they really want to help them," said Medalia. "People have to pay a lot of money for it, it's not subsidised by the government. "They borrow money from family and friends." The documentary doesn't go into all the details of treatment at the centre – there are bizarre scenes of patients with heads covered in a helmet of wires, in theory to monitor their brain activity – although it does show how desperate the teenagers get when deprived of an online fix. One is shown begging his parents to let him out, vowing in exchange to play "for only four hours a day online". Another boasts of having once played for 300 hours straight, barring a few short naps. Shlam said she was not convinced that all of them are really addicted. Although some probably are. "Is it an addiction or a social phenomenon? They don't think they have an addiction. But which addict will admit that he is an addict?" she asked. "I think that you can call it addiction when you don't function in your own life. The children are dropping out from school, they're going to the Internet cafes day and night, they put a diaper on, not to miss one minute of the game." Shlam pointed to two main reasons for the Chinese phenomenon: the country's long-standing one-child policy and a "very strict and competitive" education system. "Because there is one child and the future of his family is on his shoulders, the parents are pushing and pushing them to be a better student," creating intense pressures from which they seek to escape, she said. Even those running the camps admit that the "cure" they offer is only temporary. Whereas it's possible to keep a drug addict from getting heroin, "How do you manage it, because we are so dependent on the Internet for the work and for communication?" asked Medalia. The main indicator of success is probably whether the teenagers can return to some kind of normal social life. For a month, they are helped to re-learn how to talk face-to-face with their peers, and not via the Internet. "That's what one of the children said in the film: 'When I feel lonely, I go to the Internet and I find another lonely person on the other side'," said Shlam. Online addiction is also the subject of another film in competition at the US independent film festival, which runs until tomorrow at the Park City, Utah ski resort. "Love Child" focuses on a case that shocked South Korea in 2010 when a three-month old baby died of malnutrition after her parents spent more time online at a cybercafe than looking after their young infant. - AFP/Relaxnews, January 15, 2014. |
| No health shield from vitamin D pills, shows study Posted: 24 Jan 2014 04:58 PM PST Researchers led by Mark Bolland of the University of Auckland in New Zealand looked at 40 high-quality trials to see if supplements met a benchmark of reducing risk of these problems by 15% or more. Previous research had seen a strong link between vitamin D deficiency and poor health in these areas. But the new study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, strengthens arguments that vitamin D deficiency is usually the result of ill health – not the cause of it. Its authors say there is "little justification" for doctors to prescribe vitamin D supplements as a preventive measure for these disorders. "Available evidence does not lend support to vitamin D supplementation and it is very unlikely that the results of a future single randomised clinical trial will materially alter the results from current meta-analyses," they write. Vitamin D is a key component for healthy bones, teeth and muscles. It is produced naturally when the skin is exposed to sunlight or derived from foods such as oily fish, egg yolks and cheese. In March last year, British scientists, in a comparison of 4,000 women, found that vitamin D supplements taken in pregnancy made no difference to the child's bone health. And in September 2012, researchers at New York's Rockefeller University saw no evidence that vitamin D supplements lowered cholesterol, a factor in heart disease, at least over the short term. In contrast, a November 2012 investigation into pregnant women who lived in high-latitude, northern hemisphere countries with long, dark winters found a link between low levels of natural vitamin D and an increased risk of multiple sclerosis in their offspring. For these women, taking vitamin D supplements to offset the effects of long periods without sunlight could be advisable, according to that research. - AFP/Relaxnews, January 15, 2014. |
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