As technology advances, with enjoyable social media, there comes with emerging health implications like the TEXT NECK SYNDROME.
Text Neck Syndrome is not an official medical diagnosis but commonly used term for repetitive stress injury to the neck spine which may be as result of excessive texting/ use of mobile phone or computer in a poor posture. According to the Harvard Medical Health, seven out of ten people may experience neck aches at some point in their lives.
This Text Neck Syndrome is usually caused by forward head posture (that’s excessive amounts of time looking at screens, regardless of posture) leading to intense or stabbing pain in the neck, upper back and/or shoulders, tightness and reduced mobility of the neck, upper back and shoulders, referred pain such as headaches as a result of spasms of the muscles at the base of the neck. One may experience increased pain when the neck is flexed forward into the original position that caused the problem like looking down and texting. The human head weighs about 10-12pounds: for every inch the head is tilted forward, the weight of our neck has to carry double. This compresses and tightens the neck muscle, tendons and ligaments. When this bad head posture continues overtime, it leads to the aforesaid Text Neck Syndrome.
People who uses one hand to text may experience more pain at one side due to more straining of those muscles than one who uses both hands in texting or no hands if lying on a table or lap because the pain is evenly distributed on both sides of the neck and/or upper back.
There are associated problems with Text Neck Syndrome such as cervical radiculopathy ( the cervical nerves root are diseased causing electric shock-like pain, pins- and-needles tingling, numbness or weakness which may radiate from the neck down to the shoulder, arm and/or hand), balance issues, jaw pain as a result of misalignment in the cervical spine and others.
Exercises like exaggerated nod where one pulls his or her shoulders down and back, chin tuck and cat-cow can be done. Below are pictures of how to do these exercises for cervical spine health.
Good posture practices like bringing the screen of your phone or laptop to the eye level is encouraged. The use of “Text Neck App” especially android users can give you alerts on your posture by green or red light ( where green means good posture and red means bad posture).
Credits:
Kwasi Omaro 