Spine Health

Cell Phones Are Not Destroying Your Neck

“Text Neck” is mostly made-up. Big Posture came up with this fantasy to sell you healthcare you don’t need.

Who remembers the Great Newspaper Neck Epidemic of 1982? No one does, because it never happened. Just like the Medieval Monastery Illumination Guild Neck Pain Epidemic and Roman Wax Tablet Stylus Overuse Syndrome — these things aren’t real.

Text neck — the posture familiar to us all, head flexed forward, chin down… you and I and almost every user of a smartphone are guilty of assuming this position to one degree or another.

Guess what?

It’s no worse for you than any other position you get yourself into during the course of your day.

Any one position held for too long has the potential to cause pain, because we humans are meant to move and if we don’t our brains have ways of reminding us to get moving. This innate alarm bell to move is not an indicator of harm or tissue damage, it’s simply your brain telling you to start moving again.

That’s why most people are going to feel better within minutes of changing positions.

There are many good explanations for why we are hard wired to move frequently or start to get a pain signal. Joint cartilage does not have it’s own blood supply for one thing, and relies on movement for it’s nutrition.

Are Eggs Health Food This Week?

Scientific studies are coming out all the time. One week eggs are bad for you, the next week we should all be eating more eggs.

Pain which occurs in the neck can have many causes, and sticking your head down into flexion for too long could be one of them, but spines are built to flex.

So here’s a study where they examined 582 people which concluded:

Text neck was not associated with prevalence of NP, NP frequency, or maximum NP intensity in adults.

NP = Neck Pain

If you’re looking for a study showing that sustained flexion of the cervical spine leads to neck pain, those are out there too.

Big Posture Is Coming For Your Wallet

There is a lot of money to be made in solving the health scourge that is “Text Neck”. Special pillows, doctor visits, underwear, physical therapy, weird posture correcting shirts, braces, chiropractic care, creams, lotions, exercise courses, yoga classes, gadgets ,and who knows what else…all geared to correcting posture and eliminating pain caused by tech overuse.

I get it, I am a chiropractor, and I treat many patients with a substantial amount of neck pain, and a good deal of them attribute at least a part, if not all, of their pain to using a computer too much, or spending too much time on their phones.

These people are not doing permanent damage to their spines, and you do not need to fork out hundreds of dollars to get a “fix” for your temporary pain during prolonged neck flexion.

Why?

Because the natural history of neck pain is such that a lot of people experience resolution of their pain in 4–8 weeks, and even those who seek treatment, wind up with the same amount of pain resolution after 4–8 weeks as the groups who do nothing but wait and see.

I’m not against treating symptoms, I myself take cold medicine when I have a head cold, but I’m not under any illusion that the syrup is healing me, time and my immune system are ample to get the job done. I realize not everyone will survive even a common cold, but I’m talking horses not zebras.

The vast majority of “text neck” pain sufferers will be fine without expensive tests, bracing undergarments, advanced imaging, months long care plans at the PT or chiropractor’s office, etc.

But my neck does hurt when I look at my phone too long…

Two pieces of advice…take more breaks, and move more frequently.

It’s the same advice I give almost all my patients who have pain which is made worse with prolonged time spent in static postures. If you stand all day, it tends to hurt, sitting for a few minutes every once in a while makes it feel better. Sitting all day hurts. Take many short breaks to stand or pace for two minutes.

Microbreaks for more movement tend to go a long way in alleviating these posture related aches and pains, probably because that’s what your brain is already telling you to do by ringing the pain alarm in the first place.

But don’t think because your neck hurts when you’ve been on your phone the last 105 minutes straight you are doing some irreparable damage to your spine, that’s Big Posture trying to separate you from your $$$.

Works Consulted:

1. Correia, Igor Macedo Tavares MSca; Ferreira, Arthur de Sá PhDa; Fernandez, Jessica MSca; Reis, Felipe José Jandre PhDb,c; Nogueira, Leandro Alberto Calazans PhDa,b; Meziat-Filho, Ney PhDa Association Between Text Neck and Neck Pain in Adults, SPINE: May 1, 2021 — Volume 46 — Issue 9 — p 571–578 doi: 10.1097/BRS.0000000000003854
2. Maher, Christopher G.* Natural course of acute neck and low back pain in the general population: the HUNT Study, Pain: August 2013 — Volume 154 — Issue 8 — p 1480–1481 doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2013.04.031
3. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/technology-general-science/text-neck-epidemic-truly-over
4. David, D., Giannini, C., Chiarelli, F., & Mohn, A. (2021). Text Neck Syndrome in Children and Adolescents. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(4), 1565. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041565