Are we too reliant on Twitter?

There have been people who’ve Twitter travelled - going only where tweets tell you to go.

There have been others who partake in the Twitter diet – posting their every calorific intake in order to shame them into eating less.

But what about the Twitter diagnosis? Gone are the days when you’d struggle the overweight family medical dictionary down from the top shelf (that once correctly diagnosed me with meningitis). Or even the new and immediate NHS direct helpline.

When businessman Patrick Johnson awoke with a partially paralysed face, he tweeted ‘I feel like I've had a stroke. Half of my face doesn't work properly.’

And thank god not just media junkies and bored businessmen use the networking tool, as the response he got back was from Scottish woman Marj who replied ‘If you're truly serious, get to the doc. Bell's palsy facial symptoms mimic a stroke’.

Well thank god for Marj indeed as a few hours later and at the hospital Patrick was diagnosed with and treated for ‘Bells palsy, a condition which, if not treated immediately, can have lasting damage.

I can’t say I’m faultless. Making the hard decision to leave friends family and a good job and move to Cornwall 2 years ago was partially left up to my twitter followers. As was whether to allow myself one or two glasses of mid-week wine a couple of nights back.

But if I woke up with a face that didn’t work I’d like to think the first thing I’d do would be get to the doctors.

Has modern technology removed the responsibility we used to take for ourselves, placing our health, diet and movements into the hands of others?