Move over tennis elbow — text neck has arrived.
There are plenty of maladies in our modern age, but a new one has been introduced as a by product of the growing smartphone revolution.
And it's not simply a malady any longer, it's been classified as a "world-wide health concern" by Dr. Dean L. Fishman, Chiropractic Physician.
The Text Neck Institute talks about the added risks of this repeated stress injury and warns if left untreated, it can eventually cause permanent damage. Americans on average spend about 2.7 hours per day on their smartphones and even more time looking down while searching the web.
Hunching over to read on a tiny portable device causes undue stress on your neck and shoulders — resulting in headaches as well as creating a huge pain in the neck from poor posture. It's so common that it has been coined "text neck" by Dr. Fishman.
"The average human head weighs 10 pounds in a neutral position -- when your ears are over your shoulders. For every inch you tilt your head forward, the pressure on your spine doubles. So if you're looking at a smartphone in your lap, your neck is holding up what feels like 20 or 30 pounds."
While I'm not quite convinced that text neck is a
"global epidemic" as Dr. Fishman calls it— the remedy is remembering to take frequent breaks
from your devices (about every 20 minutes to stretch).
And if you can't, The Text Neck Institute created a mobile app, "Text Neck Indicator" to keep your device correctly positioned while reading.
If you happen to suffer from text neck, Self.com has a helpful list of simple exercises aimed at relieving your symptoms.
"Text Neck is not just a texting problem," says Dr. Dean Fishman. "Text neck is a gaming problem. Text neck is an e-mailing problem."
[via CNN]
Not a lot of good that research does. People should really just take a lot of frequent breaks, exercise a bit and look around basically. That keeps them safe. Poor chaps do a lot of research but very few people pay any heed to it anyway.
Posted by: Jignesh | October 29, 2012 at 06:20 AM