Texting is Bad For Your Spine - What is 'Tech Neck'?

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Have you ever wondered why your back and neck hurts after several hours at work responding to email messages and texting on your tab or smartphone? You may be in for a big surprise to know that working on your phone for several hours can actually do damage to your neck and spine.

According to a report gathered by Lancaster Online, the new illness is called "tech neck." It is the result of bad positioning of the head for a few hours, which will cause headaches and pack pains. According to Dawn Cox, a physical therapist at Lancaster's Prana Functional Manual Therapy, this problem could lead into a more serious case if people are not mindful of the way they use their tech gadgets.

"We're asking these ligaments and muscles to do things over a period of time ... and then asking them not to get damaged. It's repetitive stress injuries over time that's happening," she said.

Most of these problems happen to young people because of the amount of time they spend on these gadgets, in which they have to tilt down when using them.

Cox said that she wants to deliver the message to people who don't realize the effect of bad posturing. She added that athletes often asked for her help with regard to their performance and her investigation would normally end up in one common result: poor posture.

"Not only do I want to help people prevent injury, but what's really important - and I don't think people really connect the dots yet - is you can perform better in your sport," Cox said. "You can perform better in your job or anything that's sort of a laborious sort of position."

Experts say that people don't realize how heavy a human head is. In an earlier report by the Atlantic, it stated that an adult human head weights not less than 10 pounds. The amount of force used on an adult human head when looking down at the phone checking Facebook and email messages is pretty serious.

According to a New York back surgeon, Kenneth Hansraj, the human head gets heavier once a person decides to look down because of the gravitational pull.

"As the head tilts forward the forces seen by the neck surges to 27 pounds at 15 degrees, 40 pounds at 30 degrees, 49 pounds at 45 degrees and 60 pounds at 60 degrees," Hansraj explained, as reported by the Atlantic.

Clearly, not a lot of people know about this as we continue to see tech users make the same mistake over and over again.