I was recently diagnosed with a medical condition. I've got a mild case of it, but it brings a few troublesome complications regardless, nothing serious. And as one might well do, the first thing I did when I got home upon receiving my diagnosis was Google it to learn more. The list of symptoms included what took me to treatment in the first place, a good number of troubles I don't have, and a surprising entry: poor body image. The diagnosis? Scoliosis.

Now, if I'm being officially diagnosed for the first time at age 35, obviously my scoliosis isn't terribly problematic. I was monitored for it as a child (do they still do those annual scoliois screenings at school? It somehow seems like a remnant of the '70s, like the Dorothy Hamill haircut) but it was so mild that it barely qualified as scoliosis, and it didn't warrant treatment -- certainly not intervention like surgery or a brace. Basically, my muscles compensate for my wonky spine, running me through varying degrees of pain; I treat it with exercise, occasional ibuprofen, massage, and masturbation. (Deenie in da house!) In other words, it's not a huge deal, and it's not something that weighs on my mind a lot.

But there it is, that symptom far down on the list -- below the physical pain, below the visual cues -- poor body image. There's a whole body of work devoted to studying the psychosocial effects of scoliosis, particularly in adolescents, but it boils down to this: Something about your body is "wrong," and chances are it's not something you ever thought was a problem, and you really can't do much of anything about it. Wearing a brace may or may not have an impact on patients' body image, but there's evidence supporting a correlation between scoliosis and body image, regardless of treatment.

Now, the people being studied aren't people like me: I'm an adult, for starters, and one with a very mild case of scoliosis. Though I've been told repeatedly by chiropractors, tailors, and osteopaths that there's something irregular about my form, nobody until recently has used the word scoliosis about my body since the sixth grade. Whatever body image problems I have come from the usual suspects -- perfectionism, media, growing up girl -- not my spinal curvature.

But it's not hard for me to see how my body image has shifted ever so slightly in the past few weeks. Part of it was the pain that drove me to seek treatment; it's difficult to feel like your body is something to be proud of when you're wincing whenever you take off your shirt. But more than that, I've learned that -- and this is an unkind term -- I'm misshapen. I found myself complaining of feeling "broken" and "twisted" -- words I've never used to describe myself. Whenever I've had a problem with my body, there's been a part of me that has known it's in my head, because the concerns I had were solely about about how I appeared. If I thought my thighs were unappealing, there was still a part of me that understood that "unappealing" was subject to interpretation. With a twisted spine that was causing me pain -- that wasn't in my head, that was in my bones.

Facebook Timeline may be exacerbating the weight insecurity that many users already feel by making it easier to compare their weights at different points in their lives, a new survey suggests.

Researchers at the The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore commissioned a public survey of 600 Facebook users age 16 to 40 and discovered that the majority of users with Timeline had used the feature to compare their weights at different points in their lives.

In addition, 14 percent of users who had switched to Timeline had installed applications that allow users to track and chart their weight loss, and 37 percent said they were interested in trying out the feature in the future.

But Facebook Timeline or not, the survey found that 75 percent of users on the social network felt unhappy with their current weight, with 51 percent reporting that seeing of pictures of themselves on the site made them more aware of their size. Nearly 1 in 3 users said that when they compared pictures of themselves to pictures of friends, they felt sad.

"Facebook is making it easier for people to spend more time and energy criticizing their own bodies and wishing they looked like someone else," Dr. Harry Brandt, director of The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt, said in a press release. "In this age of modern technology and constant access to SmartPhones and the internet, it's becoming increasingly difficult for people to remove themselves from images and other triggers that promote negative body image, low self-esteem and may ultimately contribute to eating disorders."

Steven Crawford, associate director at the Center for Eating Disorders, said that excessively monitoring one's weight can be a contributing factor to eat disorders, and that behavior is now easier than ever thanks to Facebook.

"People are now constantly aware of their appearance, thanks to Facebook. A common reaction is, 'I need to be thinner' And it's that kind of thinking that can lead to hazardous dieting," Crawford told TechNews Daily.

"Facebook is an influential factor in developing severe eating disorders," he said.

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, about 1 percent of women will develop anorexia nervosa in her lifetime, and 3.5 percent of women will develop a binge eating disorder such as bulimia nervosa. Between 1999 to 2006, the rate of hospitalization for eating disorders increased by 18 percent.

At least one study has linked Facebook use with eating disorders. A survey of 248 female Facebook users age 12-18 found that the more time young women spend on Facebook, the more likely they are to develop an eating disorder.