Blog

How to avoid the pain of text neck

How to avoid the pain of ‘Text Neck’

May 14, 2019 Back Pain, DSE Assessments

Text neck is a result of hunching your back and lowering your head whilst using your mobile phone. Often we do this without realising, but it’s time to take notice of how using mobile phones can negatively impact our posture.

The cause

The head could be considered one of the heaviest parts of the body, and every inch that the head moves out of its ideal alignment, weight on the lower back increases massively.

When the head moves forward, the head becomes 4kg heavier, which puts immense pressure on the neck and back, making them work much harder to maintain an upright posture.

This intense pressure can lead to muscular back pain and even disc herniation in the lower back.

How to prevent the pain

  • Be more aware of your posture when using a mobile device. Make sure your back is straight and your head is looking forward, not down.
  • Take regular breaks from using your mobile phone.
  • Make sure to stretch if you have spent a long period of time on your phone. To stretch the back of the neck, place both hands on top of the head and gently pull the head down until the chin touches the chest. Also, to stretch the sides of the neck, place one hand on top of the head and pull gently to the side, repeat this on each side.

 Get a DSE Workstation Assessment

Text neck doesn’t disappear just because you’re at work. And if you don’t have the correct workstation set-up, then your neck pain could be made a lot worse.

A DSE workstation assessment is carried out to assist with ranging medical conditions that could impair an individual’s ability to work to their full potential.

To ensure you have a comfortable working posture, Vergo’s friendly ergonomic experts can come to your place of work to identify any issues with your set-up and guide you to the best solutions.

For further information about how Vergo can help contact us here.



Back to blog list