All our daily activities influence our body one way or another. For instance, light or medium exercises that do not make you sweaty or breathless, are undoubtedly beneficial for your body and health. These can include brisk walks, riding a bicycle, dancing and so on. However, if you do some heavy, strenuous exercises or do some tedious and monotonous activities repeatedly, your body may become exhausted and painful.
By repeating some movements over and over again, like in sports, we tend to overuse some muscles. Technology is starting to take its toll on our body Posture as well.
Tech-neck
Technology has become an unavoidable part of many people’s everyday lives. However, experts are getting concerned about the effect it has on our posture. Namely, hand-held technology devices have an adverse effect on our body and cause a lot of muscle problems. You probably felt some wrist pain after a long period of using your PC mouse. While using our devices, we tend to hunch our shoulders forward and, by doing that, we put an enormous pressure on our neck and spine.
According to Kimberly Fielding, an exercise teacher in New York City, keeping this posture for a long time can result in an unnatural curve in our spine which then triggers nerve pain and other inconveniences. So, the occurrence of muscle strain caused by mobile phones, tablets, and other small gadgets is now commonly known as ‘'tech neck'’.
How can you detect it?
If you are obsessed with typing messages, playing video games, constantly watching movies, videos and so on, then you may face this problem. Sometimes, we don’t even notice the symptoms until the pain becomes impossible to ignore. Common symptoms are neck or spine pain, headache, slight pain in your hands or arm, bad posture etc. Some people completely lose hand or fingers strength.
Ways of dealing with it
Although it seems that you can’t hide from modern technology, you definitely can and should avoid using it excessively. If you are using it on a daily basis, then you should give your body breaks. Do some stretches, rest your eyes from time to time, and, most importantly, keep a horizontal gaze while holding your gadget. This way you can avoid forward head posture. Give your eyes some rest by closing them for 5 minutes or blinking fast for a few times so as to hydrate your dry eyes. Also, stretch your legs often and do some easy yoga exercises for neck and spine pain.