November 19, 2010
By Brian Bujdos
Sometimes, common sense is just too hard of a concept to follow. Take for instance the heartbroken young man who kept logging on to Facebook to see the image of his former girlfriend. All of the major news agencies picked up this story this morning, originally run in The Lancet.
It seems the girlfriend scorned the young man in favor of many new young men who became friends with her on Facebook. The heartbroken gent then assumed a new user name and again befriended her. However, every time he would log on to his former sweetheart’s webpage and see her picture, he would hyperventilate and cause an asthma attack.
After several episodes of this self-punishing nature, the chap then sought help from a psychologist who advised him not to log on to Facebook anymore. This abruptly brought an end to the asthma attacks.
Now, this may not sound like the most clinical of studies, but the young man’s treating physician wrote up a report on this whole chain of events and had it 
published in The Lancet. At face value (yes, the pun was intended), this seems like an open-and-shut case of “avoid the trigger” of your asthma or other medical condition.
However, the author of the report, Dr. Gennaro D’Amato of the High Speciality Hospital A Cardarelli, in Naples, Italy, wanted to make a specific point about the potential negative health consequences of social websites such as Facebook.
The respiratory and allergy physician concluded, in part, that: "This case indicates that Facebook, and social networks in general, could be a new source of psychological stress…” and that they could exacerbate certain medical conditions such as asthma. The doctor pointed out that this is the first medical documentation of any such exacerbation caused by social networks.
As one doctor from the Bronx pointed out in response to the report, any number of things may trigger asthma – and if the young man would have seen his former girlfriend on the street, it is highly likely his asthma would have been triggered by that encounter.
According to ABC News, psychological stress is known to trigger asthma. In fact, stress can cause the autonomic nervous systems to tighten up the airways in depressed asthmatics.
In other words, it seems that asthmatics should make a conscious decision to shield themselves from stress as much as possible. This was not the case, obviously, for the young man who needed extra help from his doctors before he could improve his situation.
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