What the Heck is Text Neck?
Checking your phone frequently can be a real …pain in the neck.
Text neck syndrome, also known as tech neck or smartphone neck, is a relatively new term that describes neck pain and damage due to looking down at electronic devices for prolonged periods.
On average, people between the age of 18-45 send over a 100 messages per day; add in the time spent watching videos, editing pictures, tapping out emails or even just scrolling through social media and it comes to an average of 3 hours and 15 minutes spent on our phones daily.
The human head weighs about 5 kilograms. However, when it is angled forward and downwards, the effective weight to your spine increases. This puts an enormous amount of stress on the neck, shortening and tightening the muscles and compressing the nerves to cause neurological dysfunction, pain and eventually muscle spasms. This can lead to spinal degeneration and ill health.
At a certain point in time it may not be possible to reverse it.
Chiropractic care can help restore proper posture and improve health and wellbeing.
Complications
Without treatment or management, text neck may lead to more severe conditions or complications, including:
- Chronic pain: Over time, untreated text neck can develop into chronic neck pain and upper back pain and headaches, which can significantly affect a person’s quality of life.
- Muscle imbalances: The constant strain on neck muscles and ligaments can lead to muscle imbalances in the neck and upper back. This can affect posture.
- Spinal misalignment (Subluxation): Text neck can cause changes in the natural curvature of the spine, potentially leading to conditions like curvature of the upper or lower spine.
- Degenerative disc disease: The increased pressure on the cervical spine due to poor posture may accelerate the wear and tear of the intervertebral discs, contributing to Degenerative Disc Disease, a condition that causes pain, stiffness, and reduced mobility in the affected area.
- Nerve compression: Prolonged compression of the nerves in the neck can lead to conditions like radiculopathy — leading to pain, tingling, or numbness in the arms and hands.
- Respiratory problems: reduces and shallows breathing.
Where do the neck nerves go?
Where do they not go!
They travel to the blood vessels of the brain, to the muscles of the shoulders, neck and arm, and to the entire body.
So if you affect neck nerves, you can affect anything in the human body.
This is the magic and importance of the cervical spine.
Want to avoid text neck? Prevention is key.
To prevent text neck, be mindful of your posture while using electronic devices.
Also . .
- Keep your head ( and remind your kids!) in a neutral position.
- Hold or position devices at eye level when possible.
- Take frequent breaks to stretch and relax the neck and shoulders.
- Use ergonomic accessories, like laptop stands and phone holders, can also help a person avoid text neck syndrome.
- Keep your smartphone at eye level as far as possible. Avoid hunching and bending.
- Get adjusted to minimise spinal nerve stress, and improve health, posture, wellbeing and vitality.