What do you usually do while waiting for a bus or sitting on the subway on your way to
the office?
I like to tie a $20 bill on a string, toss it on the floor and snatch it away when people
try to pick it up.
Yeah, but that’s me.
If you're like a lot of people, you're watching the screen of your smartphone or tablet.
Why not?
Everyone does it, after all.
Our gadgtes are closer to us than anything or anyone else.
They're a source of information, communication, and fun.
But it's good to keep in mind that our devotion to our gadgets is bad for the spine.
American scientists have found out that we spend more than 2 hours a day looking at the
screens of our smartphones, and touch them almost 3000 times.
Wooh, think of the germs!
Their Australian colleagues went further and did a study on how gadgets influence our health.
The results were astonishing.
218 people aged 18 to 30 took part in the research.
Doctor David Shahar found a small bone appendix in the back of the head of 41% of the participants.
He took into account smaller growths, but 10% of the participants had a strange appendix
larger than 0.8 inches.
Its maximum length was 1.4 inches for men and 1 inch for women.
During the second study, scientists examined 1,200 people aged 18 to 86.
The results showed that it was mainly young people who had the appendix.
Doctor Shahar and his colleagues assumed that the extra growth, and damage, was caused by
bad posture.
Using gadgets makes us bend our head unnaturally low and keep it in this position for an absurdly
long time.
As a result, the weight of the head is distributed differently, which causes huge amounts of
pressure on the place where the muscles are attached to the skull, leading to changes
in the bones and sinews.
The average time people spend with their eyes glued to the screen grew by 3 times in only
one year, between 2010 and 2011, and it keeps growing.
Doctor Shahar says that because of this growing screen time, each following generation will
have a consecutively bigger appendix.
Scientists believe that the appendix itself poses no danger, but a spinal curvature does.
It might even cause different diseases.
The human head weighs about 11 lb.
Really, if you yank your head off your body and put it on a scale, you’ll be, you know,
deceased, but 11 pounds is about what your head will weigh.
Now, it’s a stable weight if the head is in a vertical position.
But the more we bend our head forward, the heavier it becomes in relation to the neck.
It weighs 27 pounds at a 15-degree angle, 40 pounds at 30, 49 pounds at 45 degrees and
60 pounds at 60 degrees.
Can you imagine your head weighing 60 pounds and your poor neck having to bear it?
A short experiment will allow you to feel the pressure your spine feels.
Bend a finger to the back of your hand as low as you can, and try to keep it in this
position, say for an hour.
It's aching, right?
I doubt that you'll be able to do it, even for a minute, but if you did, the tissues
would start getting inflamed.
The same thing happens to your neck and spine, even if you don’t feel it right away.
This is the price we pay for the possibility to be in touch 24/7, have any book, music
or film at hand and not carry anything heavier than a smartphone or a tablet.
Our bond with the gadgets is inseparable, so this inflammation happens daily, all the
time.
There’s even a term referring to the specific slope of neck that appears as a result of
it – “text neck”.
The term “text neck” appeared in 2008, when Dr. Dean L. Fishman observed a 17-year-old
patient.
The teenager complained of headaches and pain in the neck.
This problem has become a true epidemic since then.
Doctors say that children and teenagers ages 8 to18 spend 7.5 hours watching the screens
of their smartphones and tablets.
But it’s not only the young ones, it’s all of us.
Chronic pressure causes problems, some of which can be solved only by surgeons.
Long-term stretching and straining leads to an inflammatory process in our tissues.
After that, nerves can get restricted, disks rupture, and the natural curve of the neck
starts to change.
People start feeling worse; they have aches in the neck and spine, and later – headaches
too.
Bad posture also leads to other issues, like lowering the volume of the lungs.
You can easily check this by yourself.
Try to take a full breath when you’re hunched over your smartphone.
Now sit straight and try to do it again.
Do you feel the difference?
When you don't breathe properly, your blood gets less oxygen, and brings less of this
precious gas to all the organs, including the brain.
The pressure on your inner organs caused by bad posture can lead to problems with your
stomach, intestines, and metabolism.
Another thing caused by gadgets is less crucial for the health of your neck, but detrimental
to your appearance.
It’s a double chin, which appears even with young and slim girls and boys.
The soft tissues behind your chin sag down, lose their elasticity, and form what we call
a double chin.
The neck itself gets wrinkled.
High Energy Visible Light, or HEV, which the screens of smartphones, tablets and PCs radiate,
can cause premature wrinkles and pigmentation, and make skin hypersensitive.
All these effects are called digital aging.
We don’t see it immediately, but with time, our face can get reddish, inflamed, and dry.
Soon new wrinkles will appear.
It’s hard to imagine our life without gadgets, but there are steps we can take to reduce
the harm they cause to our health.
Here’re some advice: Keep your smartphone at the level of your
eyes so that your head stays in a vertical position and doesn’t bend.
But if you hold it like this all the time, it may cause problems with your shoulders
later, since there will be extra stress on them, so it's good to change positions frequently.
If you’re sitting, keep your feet on the floor, set your shoulders back and make sure
your ears are right above them, so that your head doesn’t bend forward.
You can also use a hands-free set, when you talk on the phone.
Studies also advise using 2 hands and 2 thumbs for texting – it'll create a more symmetrical
and comfortable position for the spine.
When you work on a PC, see to it that the screen is on a level that’s naturaly in
your direct line of sight.
It's bad if you have to look down on it.
The same is true of laptops.
Try to use a separate keyboard, and put the screen on the same level as your eyes.
Just to make sure that you don't forget about your neck, there's a special app.
Yes, smartphones are that smart!
When you hold your smartphone at a safe angle, you'll see a green light in the right upper
corner.
When you hold it at a dangerous angle, you'll see a red light there.
You can also add different signals or sounds to warn you.
Try “Neck guard” for Apple and “Posture” for Android.
You can ask a friend of yours to take picture of your upper body when you're texting on
the smartphone.
Then put this picture as a wallpaper.
That will remind you that you need to take breaks from using it.
Even a short break for several seconds will help to take the stress off your neck.
Use the screen time information to track what you spend your time on, and try to limit this
time.
Your eyes and neck will say thank you!
While cosmetologists are looking for ways to protect skin from digital ageing, it’s
a good idea to support it from inside.
Food rich in antioxidants can help a lot!
Fresh berries, fruits, spinach and greens, nuts and broccoli are your best friends to
fight aging.
But still, doctors are unanimous in the opinion that the most important thing is to take breaks
when working with gadgets – no matter if it's a smartphone or a PC.
Stand up every 20 minutes, massage your shoulders and neck, or have a short walk to speed up
the blood flow.
How much time a day do you spend bending over your smartphone and tablet?
Are you ready to make it shorter if it’s good for your health?
Let me know down in the comments!
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