Cell phone neck – please don’t always hang your head!

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You can see young and adult people bending over their cell phones in cramps in many places. The head, which weighs between four and six kilograms in adulthood, is held forward in an unnatural position and at an untypical inclination angle for too long. The risk of overloading the back and cervical spine is significantly increased.
Specialists warn that additional forces of 13 kg act on the back muscles, tendons, and intervertebral discs as soon as the head is tilted forward at an angle of 15 degrees! Many cell phone users bend even further over their devices sometimes, risking an additional load of about 20 kilograms. This leads to pain in the neck area.

The neck-friendly cell phone posture

So some smartphone, tablet, and e-book users spend too many hours on their devices. To avoid possible wear and tear phenomena such as hardening of the muscles, pain in the shoulder and neck, and headaches, the following expert tips are given:

take breaks in between and do exercises to loosen up your posture
sitting in a relaxed position as far as possible
Hold the device as high as possible with loosened arms
as a general rule; hold the smartphone and co. Closer to the face so that only the eyes, but not necessarily the head, need to be lowered.

Prevent the health consequences!

The “frequent cell phone users” should do compensatory sports at least once or twice weekly. After all, it is not without reason that more and more people are complaining of an aching, cramped back. Occupational physicians also report that tension and illnesses of the muscles and skeleton are increasingly leading to incapacity to work. During the daily desk routine, it is all the more essential to train the back through simple exercises.
People who do their work mainly sitting down and in a monotonous posture should loosen their arms by alternately circling them forward and backward. For this exercise, they should leave their sitting position and stand hip-width apart with their legs not fully pressed through.
To achieve successful relief of the back, doing a cat hump from time to time is recommended. To do this, the upper body is bent forward, and the head and arms dangle toward the feet. In this way, the back is made pleasantly hunched. The back should be stretched by stretching the body in the other direction. These opposite postures should be repeated several times a day.

The following exercise can provide additional support for stretching in the neck area: The right hand grips the left upper arm and pulls the left shoulder as far as possible toward the chest. This position is maintained for a few seconds, and then alternately, the right side of the neck is stretched with the left hand. For long-term relaxation and strengthening of muscles and skeleton, it is essential to use balancing sports or the many possibilities of targeted strength training. However, this should not only include exercises for the back muscles. Since numerous other muscles support the neck and back muscles – such as the abdominal muscles – these must also be trained.

Encourage exercise in everyday life.

Many people don’t realize that even simple-to-implement activities build back muscles. So if you can’t reduce your cell phone use and sit a lot, you should take advantage of all opportunities for physical activity. This includes climbing the stairs instead of taking the escalator, riding a bike or walking briskly instead of driving a car & co….