What Is Text Neck?

Text neck is known to be a modern spine ailment wherein it is associated with everyone's constant use of their cellphones. This condition causes neck pain in Vacaville and damage that happens when you're looking down at your tablets, cell phones, and other wireless devices for too long.

Overcoming Text Neck in Vacaville CA

This is very common in today's modern society. You will normally feel a severe upper back pain when you're suffering from text neck. It will make you experience an acute, severe, upper back muscle strain whenever you use your mobile devices for long periods of time.

Of course, texting isn't the only the reason why you perform a posture of bending your neck to look down. Even in the past, people do this kind of posture when they're reading. But with texting, another activity has been added that causes us to look down which makes people become attached to it for longer periods of time. Another main concern is that even children are becoming engaged to this kind of activity which may cause permanent damage to their cervical spine and could lead to a lifelong neck pain.

SYMPTOMS ASSOCIATED WITH TEXT NECK

Text neck in Vacaville will undoubtedly cause neck pain and soreness. But apart from that, looking down at your phone for too long may also lead to:

• Shoulder pain and tightness. This could even result in a painful shoulder muscle spasm.
• Upper back pain that can range from a chronic nagging pain to a sharp, severe upper back muscle spasm.
• If a cervical nerve gets pinched, you will experience pain and even neurological symptoms that could radiate from your arms down into your hand.
• The muscles located at the base of your neck could experience spasm and become painful. If you've been looking at your phone's screen for too long, regardless of posture, you could be at risk for eye strain and headache.

As some studies would suggest, text neck may lead to other chronic problems because of how it promotes the early onset of arthritis in the neck.

LESS COMMON SYMPTOMS CAUSED BY TEXT NECK

There are other symptoms where having a prolonged forward head tilting of text neck could cause. This includes the following:

• Cervical radiculopathy - This condition comes with symptoms of numbness, pins-and-needles tingling, electric shock-like pain, and/or weakness that radiates from the neck going down into the shoulders, arms, and/or hands. Cervical radiculopathy can happen when a cervical nerve root becomes compressed or irritated, such as osteoarthritis or spinal changes related to degenerative disc disease. If you happen to have a severe case of text neck, this can accelerate or even worsen this process.
• Jaw pain - If you've been experiencing a misalignment in the cervical spine and/or having muscle imbalances, jaw pain or temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain can happen to you.
• Balance issues - If you remain in a forward head posture state for a long time, there's a chance that you could have balance control issues which may be caused by the head's center of gravity moving further in front of the body. This could end up in muscle imbalances and postural control changes mainly in the neck and torso.

HOW COMMON IS TEXT NECK?

In a recent study, it shows that 79% of the population aging between 18 to 44 years old are glued to their cell phones for most of the time. The only time where they're not using their cell phones is just 2 hours of their waking day. So imagine the amount of time they spend that could offset the text neck condition on them.

For more information call our top Vacaville Chiropractor Alex Tam of Absolute Integrative Physical Medicine today!