A rather apropros piece, this about “email apnea”, courtesy of the Huffington Post, pimped by Robert Scoble, while in turn was of course reflexively promoted by Techmeme (and other news aggregators, possibly). “Apnea” referring to a period of time where one stops breathing, often heard or known as “The Apnea” (see Seinfeld), or the more medicalized term, “obstructive sleep apnea”.

The gist of things is that apparently people hold their breath while reading their email (and possibly twittering), thus, it is inferred that its part of their sympathetic system working in over time. The sympathetic system is responsible for driving up blood pressure, and is related to the “flight or fight” response, and is the cause of “stress”. Stress == “bad”, ergo, reading your email is bad.

So, why is all this “apropos”? Only because I’m studying for my Royal College Exams at the moment — and in fact, should not be blogging as much as I already have been over the past few days.

Anywhoo, as I’m clearly at my keyboard, I should take two seconds to point out a couple things, as I am in the unique position to straddle between two universes (the “medical” and internet geekery — both vaguely defined).

First of all, observing your friends and family holding their breath hardly constitutes anything remotely scientific. Hmmm. That’s harsher than I meant it to sound.

Rather, the observations of a few dozen people are hardly something to base a generalization upon. That is, just because you observe a few people holding their breath doesn’t mean that its something that many other people do.

Even *if* that supposition were true — and the only way to do it would be to do something boring, like a study, with enough people to make sure the differences were statistically important — you are *still* lumping another inference on top of that.

And that is that the supposed breath holding while reading email (or Twitter, or blogging) is in fact, a sympathetically-derived response, or, for that matter, a sympathetic-system *inducing* response.

Thirdly, even *IF* you were able to find an association of *that* you would then have to find another association: that the sympathetic-activating process of holding your breath while reading email, twittering, or blogging, is in fact significant in and of itself, when you compare it to *OTHER* sympathetically activating processes that you do during the day.

Running for a bus. Worrying about your kids. Playing computer games. Getting mad at your boss. Watching your favourite television show.

And that’s besides defining what “significant” really is. Is raising your blood pressure significant? Because that’s really just a surrogate for having an actual stroke or heart attack, or say, just plain ol’ dying.

Now, I’m being facetious, of course (mostly), but I’m doing it to prove a point (and not that I am sometimes a bit of a twat).

Ms. Stone makes several leaps in logic in her piece, although its clear she’s tried to do some legwork for it. It context, the purpose was logical, since it makes for a great piece: in a publication (Huffington Post) that targets mainly white collar folks who probably *do* do a lot of email reading (they’re reading a blog, aren’t they?), she’s identifying a seemingly obvious finding (breath holding) that seems benign, but shockingly, may have serious medical consequences, but that no one has identified yet.

What’s my point in all of this?

Just how important media — and perhaps, medical — literacy is in this great big world of New Media. That its important to really question the kinds of stories and propositions you come along, as more and more people are becoming self-publishers after a fact (blogging), or contributing to such publications.

In this particular piece, coming to the conclusion that reading email will kill you is tantalizing, in a kind of tabloidish kind of way, and even makes sense from a kitchen-sink kind of logic if you follow the piece.

Specifically with this post, and with all due respect to Ms. Stone, there are several *large* caveats with the leaps in logic she makes, and its important that in the discourse of things, its pointed out.
In “new media”, I find that the need to vet stories is obviously less strong, as the need to have content and be first becomes the first priority. We’ve often seen in the Tech side of the blogosphere that this kind of attitude is “ok” so long as the original post is updated.

Bottom line isn’t a ground breaking one, but its one that can’t be said enough:

Think for yourself, and if you’ve having a hard time doing that (I know I do, especially when I’m tired) *look* for other people who *are* thinking for themselves. People who are writing in the comments section. Or other opinions on other blogs.

Thoughtful analysis is what makes the blogosphere great — and is an absolute necessity, if you’re to get anything out of it, particularly if you’re not a blogger, and have no platform to officially contribute that thought process on.

[Medical Geekery Warning: as an aside, most kinds of apnea occur in a process that isn't often controllable by you; sleep apnea, for example, occurs when you're sleeping. The problem with sleep apnea, is that some people have as dozens, perhaps as many as 50, or 100 of these episodes per hour while they're sleeping {the latter would be "severe"}. The reason *why* the body is doing this is to wake itself up temporarily to restore body tone, so that it can breath -- in REM sleep, your body loses all muscle tone, and in obstructive sleep apnea, your upper airway passages collapse, so that you cannot, breath hence the apnea bit. What's the effect of your body trying to wake itself up, possibly several hundred times a night over several hours? Studies have shown this has complicated effects, including raising the heart rate, blood pressure, and even cause thickening of the heart, even *after* you wake up, and that it can raise your chances for heart attack, fatal heart rhythms and stroke. So, is this like reading email? My humble opinion is probably not. And that's because the kind of sympathetic drive you might get while you're having apneic episodes is probably huge and maintained over several hours while you sleep as your body is fighting the urge to get oxygen, as low oxygen levels are the trigger to "wake up". On an average day, reading emails of average importance, on the other hand, is probably several orders of magnitude lower than this.]