Hoards of people
crowded the doorway as the train pulled into the station. Backpacks, shoulder
bags, elbows squished everyone together. All eyes were on the sliding door, all
except for the one twenty-something woman focused on her phone. She must have been
reading a very important text, or perhaps a compelling email. She took no
notice of anyone else, just stepped through the door, leather bag slung over a
shoulder, as if she was all alone. I was amazed at her dexterity. How can she
walk and read at the same time when crowds of commuters, all bunched together
like cattle, made their way to the escalator? Wouldn’t she trip? What if she
missed the gap and her foot fell through and broke? Is her balance so
incredible that she doesn’t have to watch as she steps on a moving staircase?
Then I realized her age and figured she was born with this ability. There must
be something different in how babies grow in the womb now. They come out
practically knowing how to program a DVR and certainly how to work a smart
phone by the age of three.
A few hours later, I
was walking down Eighth Avenue and spotted another person reading on an iPad.
She actually swiped her finger across the screen to get to the next page and
never lifted her head. How did she know where she was going? She could bump in
to someone.
The rest of the day, I
took more notice of people with their eyes peeled on a device with a screen. At
one point, I counted twelve standing on the platform waiting for the delayed New
Jersey Transit train. Nine of the men and women had their heads tilted
downward. Obviously, mine was up since I was looking around, but I will admit I’m
guilty, too, though I hope not as often. I began to wonder what our postures
would be like in the future. If you think of evolution, with humans evolving
from walking on four legs to two, ponder this. Can you picture the human
anatomy changing over years where the head would be so far forward your nose
might actually reach the destination before the rest of your body? Science
fiction could have a field day with that.
With my knowledge of
the spine and other orthopedic issues and injuries, I also thought about the
future for doctors and physical therapists – and for my grandson and all the
other young people I love. Everyone, beginning around age two or three (yes,
seriously that young), uses some kind of hand-held device with a screen and
most hold them on their lap or at waist level with their head tilted down and/or
pressed forward. So, I asked my chiropractor, Noel Plasker of Plasker Family
Chiropractic Center in HoHoKus, N.J., who’s been practicing for twenty-two
years, if he was seeing young patients with injuries that, in the past, hadn’t
occurred until much later in life. Dr. P said,
“Over the past two years I have seen more and more younger patients
with neck pain, headaches, even early stages of carpal tunnel symptoms that are
caused by "Text Neck," all the result of “overuse of our technology
advances.” To get a bit more
technical, he added, “Smart phones may
improve the way we share information or do business, however we start to
interfere with our own body’s ability to communicate with itself.” In conversations with Dr. P, I grew to
understand that the forward head position actually straightens the normal curve
of the spine and that when the bones in the neck are misaligned they impinge on
the nerves and that causes “muscle
tension, muscle spasm, or even tingling sensations in the upper back and neck.”
Think about that. I
imagine we all have had some of those problems. Problems our grandparents
didn’t experience until later in life when their spines began to degenerate. Do
we want our children and grandchildren to have these issues at a young age? Do
we, ourselves, want these issues, or shoulder and arm problems which also come
from this interference in our nerves? As Dr. P also said,
“We hold our devices with our arms bent and arm muscles contracted and
our nervous system gets over- worked and fatigued. Repeated 10, 20, 50,
100 times a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year causes a repetitive injury in
the spine… and research is showing that degeneration is occurring in the spine
in younger and younger patients with no symptoms at all.”
I don’t want to give up my iPhone, and I know four and five year olds
who love playing games on their mommy’s iPads or their own MobiGo. And taking
the device from the woman on the train or the one walking down Eighth Avenue
would be like taking a juicy bone from a dog. So what do we do? Hold the screen
on a pillow on your lap. Raise it
higher. Use it less often. Be aware of your posture. Keep your ears directly
above your shoulders.
If you’ve got other
suggestions, please put them in the comments section below. And, stay tuned: In my next
post I’ll be sharing interesting stories on injuries caused by poor posture
while doing everyday stuff – stories related to me by Michael Ryan, a Physical
Therapist at Orthopedic Care in Fair Lawn, N.J.
No comments:
Post a Comment