Have you heard about the latest buzz in town? I guess not many of you must have heard about the new “text neck syndrome”. But, it surely is a new and rising threat in the health sector. You ought to know about it before your friends make a fuss on it by saying “Are you kidding, you don’t know about Text Neck Syndrome?”
Don’t worry after reading this article I am sure your friends won’t have a reason to make fun on you. In today’s techno-savvy world, you will be surprised if someone does not have a Facebook account or is not on whatsapp. Right from kids to our oldies, everyone has smart devices such as smart cell phones, laptops, e-readers, tablets, iPad, etc. Babies too, need iPad’s to entertain them while eating or throwing tantrums. Now, too much of anything is bound to give you problems. People have become so addicted to these devices, that they are not realizing what health hazards they are getting into. “Text Neck” refers to severe pain in the neck as a result of too much texting and continuously tilting your head down while operating your smart devices.
Dr Dean L. Fishman, a U.S. chiropractor defines text neck as an “overuse syndrome or a repetitive stress injury, where you have your head hung forward and down looking at your mobile electronic device for extended periods of time.” Dr. Kiran Shete, Member, Association of Spine Surgeon of India explains, “two years ago we hardly saw any patients with this texting neck syndrome, nowadays we have 3-4 cases everyday with almost 70-80% of productive age group suffering from this syndrome. Text neck dizziness has been observed that people between the age group of 20 to 32 years are suffering with this problem, most of them being teenagers, college going students, IT professionals, corporates, etc. If you are doubtful about being a victim of texting neck syndrome, you may check if you are observing the following symptoms.
Text Neck Symptoms
If you are stuck in an unnatural posture of looking down for a continuous prolonged period of time, it will result in the following:
- Extreme soreness and neck pains.
- Cramping and tightening of muscles and nerves across the shoulders
- Severe chronic headaches
- Dizziness
- Numbness and tingling in fingers
These are the causes of neck pain. Recently doctors have observed increased curvature in the spine especially in youngsters and kids. Also early onset of arthritis, decreased lung capacity and early stage of cervical spondylosis have been seen in people suffering with this text neck syndrome.
It is all because the more you crane or tilt your neck, the more weight it has to carry. Dr Tan Kian Hian explains that “when you lean your head forward, away from its neutral position and the ears and shoulders are aligned — by an inch, the weight of your head dramatically increases.”
If you are experiencing the text neck symptoms, you must immediately take action against it. If you leave it just like that a ‘text neck dizziness’ may lead to severe problems like inflammation of the neck muscles, ligaments and nerves. It may finally even result in permanent arthritic damage as well as increased spinal curvature.
Solution to Text Neck Syndrome
Can text neck cause dizziness? Let’s know more about it, now that you are aware of the symptoms associated with text neck, it is highly recommended to implement certain changes when your body starts sending you signal, can text neck cause dizziness.
There certainly are ways to relief you of your muscular pain and discomfort but the most important criteria is you must stop the overuse of your smart devices and limit the time you spend on your tablets and smart phones.
You can absolutely be at your best health just by making some simple changes to your daily posture and work towards healthy lifestyle.
Steps to be followed for Texting Neck
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Take Frequent Breaks
Text neck disease can be easily prevented by taking frequent breaks from your smart devices at regular intervals of at least every 15 minutes simply by just looking up and bringing your neck back into its neutral position. Alternatively, you must hold your devices higher in alignment with your eyes in order to treat text neck.
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Practice Posture Focused Exercises
You must do exercises like yoga to focus your attention on obtaining the right posture. With this you will be able to better handle your mobiles and tablets in the correct posture and right way.
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When your Neck Pain gets Worse
You should seek medical attention if the practices do not work. You may then require a complete medical examination to find out the exact cause of your neck pain. In some cases neck pain exercises may be guided by experts which must be followed. Sometime muscle relaxants or a short course of anti-inflammatory agents may be given to provide relief.
You surely must have heard your elders putting limits on you from doing anything in excess. But we often take it as the so called “rules and regulations” and end ourselves getting into difficult situations. So friends please monitor the excessive use of these smart devices in your family otherwise you know what you or your kids might land into an issue which is hard to treat text neck. Not many are aware of this syndrome, so please share this information with your friends and folks too. I am sure they will appreciate it.
If you have anything to share with us regarding the text neck syndrome, please feel free to write in the comments section below.
Photo courtesy: caronchiro.com.
