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Selfies or selfies are common today. The high-end camera on a smartphone makes it easy for one to take self-portraits with great results. Not infrequently, a photo gallery on someone's cellphone is usually filled with selfies. However, experts warn that taking too many pictures, especially with flash, has its own risks. What is the risk of using a selfie using a flash light?
Why do selfies trigger seizures?
Selfie photos actually pose a threat to your health, especially if you have epilepsy. The flash on the camera aims to make the image brighter and is sometimes used when lighting is minimal.
Recently, a teenage girl in Canada experienced seizures in her brain activity after photographing herself using a flash or front camera flash. A doctor in Canada later concluded that the teenager had a photosensitive response. So the trigger for brain seizures is the result of the hobby of selfie with flash.
Doctors treating the teenager called this incident a “selfie-epilepsy” phenomenon, as published in the Seizure Journal report according to the report, which was published in February in the journal Seizure. This selfie-triggered seizure-like brain activity was discovered while the teenager was monitored in a laboratory for three days, according to the news organization Epilepsy Research in the UK.
In the laboratory, the girl is examined using electroencephalogram or EEG and also recorded with video. Although the teenager did not have a seizure in the laboratory, doctors noticed two unusual spikes in brain activity.
When they came back and reviewed the video, they found that before the spike in the teenager's brain occurred, the teenager had used his iPhone to take pictures. The teenager took a selfie using a flash light in the dim light.
It is not surprising that a selfie can trigger seizure activity in the brain, especially when the patient is known to be sensitive to light or photosensitive. Flashing lights of all kinds, including video games, strobe lights and flash lights can provoke photosensitivity.
Joseph Sullivan, an epilepsy specialist from San Francisco also noted that in the case of teenagers, selfies did not cause seizures. Rather, selfies can create changes in the wave activity in the brain that trigger seizures.
Tips to help people have seizures
Seizures are a condition that can occur by anyone with different risk factors. If you are faced with friends, family, or relatives who have seizure conditions, it is better if you know how to perform first aid for people with seizures.
First, try to position the person at an angle. This is so that the foam or liquid that comes out of the mouth does not enter the respiratory tract so that the person can breathe more freely without having to experience more tightness or even choking cough.
Also position it so that the person's head is higher than the body. When you are at home, you can provide a cushion on his head. This also aims to avoid injury to the head of the person who is spasm. Generally, seizures will get better on their own without medical help.
However, if the seizure lasts more than 5 minutes, ask for help immediately and take it to the nearest hospital.
