Introduction
The infamous “tech neck”. What is it? Why is it there? How is this affecting my health? This unintentional malformation of the muscles and spine has started to gain popularity, not completely due to awareness against it but due to the look it has put upon individuals that reminds them of a 1990s Disney movie. While exposure is exposure, we must start to think more critically on the root cause of this and how we can prevent this from continuing to be a hot topic among individuals, especially the younger generation. “Tech neck” is not only an abnormality but it is a road block to efficient growth and neural connectivity between the brain and the body. Let's dive in.
Origination
The term “tech neck” describes the most common correlation to causing the issue, technology. For the past 30 yrs with advancements of electronics, sedentary ergonomics at work, and physical efficiencies, all thanks to technology, the demand for awareness of posture has risen to critical levels and awareness of body function has declined at the same rate. Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for the advancements of technology and what it has been able to do for the benefit of basically every industry in our society but it has also created a bottleneck for health, silently creating unnecessary obstacles toward achieving optimal health. And these obstacles don't even start with adults in their later years, it can start for people even in their teens now. Patients in their youth years are starting to experience detriments and limitations long before they should which creates less of a chance of achieving true potential and middle aged adults experience degeneration and arthritis at a higher rate not only from to tech neck but due to lack of overall physical urgency with everything being in a laptop or at the palm of your hand but thats for another article, lets stick mainly to tech neck.
What Is It?
As mentioned before, tech neck does mainly connect to higher usage of technology but that's only because it is the most common thing to put a specific demand on our body at such a significant rate. The true problem lies with the constant formation you keep your head, spine, and muscles in while accessing or working with this technology. Our skull is hung over our chest like a bowling ball being held from a bending stick. Our cervical spine is forced against its structural function by flexing forward and the upper thoracic spine is exaggerating its structural function to compensate for the excess weight forward. Our superficial and deep extensor muscles are put into over drive to counteract the pressure of our head being forward. Intervertebral discs become overly pressurized constantly. And lastly, our spinal cord is being repeatedly wrenched. Another specific detail that most people neglect is the actual weight of the cranium and how it ultimately influences the intensity of demand. You can see from the picture above showing the skull hanging over the chest but that is not all. The picture below shows how the weight distribution changes with the slightest angle change. The skull initially weighs 10-12 lbs a with each 15 degree change, it adds roughly 15 more pounds of pressure for the muscles and spine to work with in trying to keep upright. It's the same concept of trying to do the sledgehammer challenge. You hold a sledgehammer horizontally with the head of it farthest away from you. It's tough right? We will leave that to the World's strongest men participants. Now bring the sledge hammer vertically and right next to your body. It becomes a lot easier to hold up, right? We must be conscious of not creating bad posture for structures but also must have spacial awareness for our skull so that we don't make the issue worse.
With all this happening continuously, our body adapts. Just like anything else the body gets taught, the body is smart and learns to mitigate the stress by incorporating measures for when something happens, it can easily revert to accommodating it through muscle memory. This doesn’t necessarily mean it is healthy for the body but it takes away the initial mental power used in maintaining it and becomes second nature. The skull continues to create physical demand for the surrounding structures. Muscles start to harden to hold to head up, the spine curvature loses mobility and hardens forward leading to degeneration sooner. The muscles in the front of the neck become weak and small. Disc bulges and herniations begin to occur due to worn out discs. And, again the spinal cord stays tense and stretches causing extra pressure on the brain and peripheral nerves leading to constant tension and cervicogenic headaches. This is also when true “tech neck” starts to settle in.
What can we do?
So what can we do? What is the solution? The best thing would be to gain awareness from the beginning and not develop such a severe “tech neck”, but if you have already started down the path, it’s okay. It can be fixed. It will take time because it took time to develop this way and we must retrain the body as you trained it the opposite way but there are solutions and it's not irreversible. So first we need to look at our lifestyle and ergonomics. What is causing us to put ourselves this way and how can we modify it? Do we need to spend less time on the phone, move our desk higher, have a standing desk, or simply take time out of the day to move opposite of what has been for a long period of time. The body thrives on not just movement but diversity of movement. IT can’t stay in one position if it goes through multiple positions. It keeps the joint lubricated, muscles active, and feeds the brain stimulation. Next we need to address the muscular and spinal limitations that were created. With the forward head posture, all the muscles in the front become tight, weak, and small. The deep neck flexors, and pec muscles. We must stretch those to assist in opening up the shoulders, and for the posterior muscles. We must strengthen those like the trapezius, rhomboids, teres minor/major, and subscapularis. They are tight but only due to being elongated for so long and still weak. They must regain strength to assist in keeping upright posture for longer periods of time. For the spine, we must create movement and break the pattern. This is done through stretching but also more efficiently done through adjustments. The chiropractic adjustment will unlock those joints that are restricted and lay the foundation for reeducation to begin through not just allowing mobility but igniting the nerves in that area to start functioning again properly.
Lastly, would be not structural related but recovery related. Everything is connected and even the brain can have limits on its own capability if not taken care of. Mental stress creates distortion in the communication and therefore creates less quality processing in what is really going on and how to counteract it. Not enough sleep causes the body and brain to be fatigued in fighting against any type of stress and long term exposure of screen time with no rest will also create caps of healing in this process. These are things that don’t show physically but have very real effects.
Conclusion
Now that we have explained the origin of tech neck, what it really is, and how we can counteract it. I want to say that I understand it is not easy. The age of technology is not slowing down at all and times will still continue to move forward just like your head posture if you allow it. We must also remember that technology is not the sole contributor to having this poor posture and poor posture doesn't always correlate with the same type of pain for everyone. The idea is not to be perfect and be aware 24/7 of the position of the back or head but the idea is to become more aware of how much different movement you are getting on a daily basis and how strong is your body in counteracting that. Motion is lotion and the more we keep it through stretching, exercising, and getting adjusted. The better off you are in physical and mental endurance. Lets not teach our body complacency and force into a state of adaptability for survival but teach it diversity and force it into a state of adaptability for resiliency. Live Primal💪