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Imagine that you have to carry a seven-year-old child on your neck all day long – this is exactly the load that the neck experiences when we bend down to get a better look at our smartphone selfie.
Man was designed to stand upright, but modern technology really forces us to bow our heads before them. Take a look around and you will see a lot of people who spend their days leaning over the small screen of a smartphone – they are staring into it.
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We spend an average of 2 to 4 hours a day tilting our neck at an unnatural angle to view photos, read email or text on our phone*. The social media craze has led to an epidemic of poor posture due to smartphones.
The head of an adult weighs an average of 5 kg – provided that it is slightly elevated or in a neutral position. The more we tilt our neck, the heavier our skull becomes – the force of gravity works. For example, tilting your neck at a 60-degree angle to view a selfie on your phone puts a 30kg load on your cervical spine. That’s about the weight of a seven year old.
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“The load on the spine increases several times when we tilt our head at different angles,” says Dr. Kenneth Hansraj, head of spine surgery at the Center for Spinal Surgery and Rehabilitation in New York and leader of the study published in the journal Surgical Technology International. A head tilt of 15 degrees “adds” 14 kg of load to the spine, 30 degrees – 20 kg, and an angle of 45 degrees – almost 25 kg of weight.
“As a result, the natural curve of the cervical spine is lost, leading to poor posture, early wear, tearing, and other spinal problems,” Gansray explains.
It is no secret that correct posture affects not only the back, but the whole body as a whole. Studies have shown that good posture increases levels of the joy hormone serotonin and lowers levels of the stress hormone cortisol. On the contrary, stooping leads to problems with physical and emotional well-being – it provokes headaches, depression, intestinal problems and heart disease, not to mention chronic back pain.
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That’s why Gansrai and his colleagues advise to carefully monitor the position of the neck and try not to tilt it too much when using a smartphone. “Looking at yourself in the mirror, pay attention to the fact that one ear does not seem higher than the other (if you draw a conditional line, it should be parallel to the line of the shoulders), and the shoulder blades (the so-called “angel wings”) are laid back,” says Gansray. This is the optimal position for our spine and a guarantee of good posture.
* See more at http://www.cbsnews.com