The Great Phone Epidemic – Is your iSlouch destroying your Spine? (Part 2)
Claire - April 7, 2014
If
“Sitting, to your spine is like a sugar, to your teeth” then spending hours on
your phone does to your spine what becoming a meth addict does to your
dentition.
You may have heard about the impact that sitting has on our spines. There are a number of studies coming out at the moment comparing the health impacts of sitting to those of smoking cigarettes and the conclusion is not great: Sitting is the new smoking. It
compresses and dehydrates the discs and promotes an unhealthy environment that
can lead to serious decay of the spinal bones. It puts pressure on the nerves exiting the spine and reduces the flow of life-giving cerebrospinal fluid to the brain, essentially starving it. But sitting is nothing compared
to how the posture we assume when we are looking at our mobile phone and the
severe consequences this has on your spine.
It is
near on impossible to spend any time on your phone without dropping your head
forward and down to look at the screen. This is within the normal healthy range
of motion for your neck, but holding that position frequently or for extended
periods of time it can put your entire alignment out and put excessive tension
on the central nervous system. As your head drops forward, it’s relative weight
increases, which means the muscles require much more energy to hold it in
that position. As the muscle fatigue, your shoulders begin to round forwards
also and the curve of your middle back begins to increase. Next, your core
muscles begin to fatigue and you spine starts to make a C-shape. Or if you are
standing, you throw your pelvis forward to stop yourself from falling on your
face. With habit, the muscles and ligaments either stretch or shorten
permanently and some atrophy while others work so hard that scar tissue is laid
down. Then we begin to assume this posture all the time. This decreases your ability
to get the full range of motion in your neck which eventually leads to spinal
decay and spurs growing on the bones.
As we
look down and forwards the spinal cord is stretched and compressed as it
travels down the spinal column. This stretch can be so great that sometimes the
brain stem is herniated down into the top vertebrae. This is the part of the
brain that controls the most important function in the brain, such heart rate
and breathing. Having that sort of pressure all the time can have untold effects
on your future health.
At the
other end, as the pelvis is forced forwards the pressure is greatly increased
in the discs of the lumbar spine, squeezing the fluid out of them and robbing
them of the nutrients they require to stay healthy. This also leads to bone
spurs, “slipped discs” and lower back pain.
Each
year we are seeing younger and younger people come into see our Chiropractic
Doctors with some level of degeneration in the spine and/or serious symptoms
like migraines, neck pain, low back pain as well as breathing problems and even
high blood pressure. This iSlouch posture is an epidemic with a dramatic impact
on the health of our society.
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