{"id":780,"date":"2018-02-13T10:07:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T15:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/?p=780"},"modified":"2018-02-13T10:07:15","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T15:07:15","slug":"selfies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/?p=780","title":{"rendered":"Selfies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Dear Dr. K: Among the many challenges and downsides of our smartphones, can you point to any not-so-obvious upsides to these instruments we glue our eyeballs to? <\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, today\u2019s craze in smartphone selfies may have some medical value that extends beyond vanity.<\/p>\n<p>To date, three medical conditions have been diagnosable from selfies: pancreatic cancer, skin cancers and oxygen desaturation. It seems other people\u2019s scrutiny of selfies posted on social media can lead to changes being noticed.<\/p>\n<p>In the case of skin cancers on the face, they may be so small or so slow-growing that the individual doesn\u2019t notice the day-to-day change, but others do.\u00a0 In people with chronic heart or lung conditions a slight change in facial coloration due to reduction in oxygen concentration in the blood may be more readily perceived by others than by ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, one of the earliest changes seen in pancreatic cancer can be a very slight scleral jaundice (yellowing of the whites of the eyes). If caught in its early stages, pancreatic cancer has a much better cure rate. Selfies can be very sensitive in catching this early change. So much so that for people with a family history of pancreatic cancer there is a new app \u2013 dubbed \u201cBili Screen\u201d \u2013 in which captured pictures can detect slight levels of scleral yellowing (from bilirubin) before this change is even visible to direct observation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Dr. K: Among the many challenges and downsides of our smartphones, can you point to any not-so-obvious upsides to these instruments we glue our eyeballs to? &nbsp; As it turns out, today\u2019s craze in smartphone selfies may have some medical value that extends beyond vanity. To date, three medical conditions have been diagnosable from selfies: pancreatic cancer, skin cancers and oxygen desaturation. It seems other people\u2019s scrutiny of selfies posted on social media can lead to changes being noticed&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/?p=780\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[368,369],"class_list":["post-780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-selfies","tag-smartphones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":781,"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions\/781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allergy-associates.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}