This post is a slight change of pace for us, rather than reading about what is on my mind this week, for the first time we invite you to WATCH it instead.
Leading into Spinal Health Week with a theme of “chiro can help”, Martin and I thought we would make a very quick video about the dangers of “text neck”.
Please watch me make my video debut as we discuss the importance of this simple but very under appreciated element of daily life.
For those of you not inclined to enjoy a video format, I will summarise below.
Text neck is that happens to us when we spend too much time with our head in our phones. Look out your window right now (or just as likely if you're reading this on your smart phone or tablet, think about your own posture) and you are bound to see people leaning their head right forward into the screens of their devices.
Craning our head forward towards a device causes our posture to follow. Eventually our head stays forward and our shoulders roll forward to follow it.
This poor posture does not only affect adults, unfortunately it is now very common to see this position in children as they can spend even more time on devices than some adults!
This head forward posture can lead to number of conditions that we see in practice every day, such as headaches, neck pain, migraine, shoulder pain, tight shoulders or a dowagers hump, just to name a few.
There are several exercises we regularly recommend in practice to clients that we identify need to work on this posture but for this video we wanted to keep it simple.
Stop, being, in, that, position.
It is as simple and as difficult as that. Stop training your body to only be good at putting your head forward.
The solution we offer in the video is to merely hold your phone up higher so it’s in front of your face. Bring the device to you, not you to it!
I know it sounds too simplistic or even glib but we are being sincere, make yourself aware of your posture and what position you are training your body to be in, try to stop staring at screens as often as you can, and if you find yourself looking down at your screen, as yourself, why is it in my lap and not up in front of my face?