Study: Texting can actually harm your spine
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Your Facebook-checking, constant-texting lifestyle may be taking a toll on your neck. Looking down at your phone can put a strain on your neck equivalent to the weight of 60 pounds, a study finds.
To put that in perspective, 60 pounds is the weight of an 8-year-old or four bowling balls, the Atlantic reports. That's if you're leaning forward at a 60-degree angle; at 45 degrees, it's 49 pounds, while at 30 degrees, it's 40 pounds.
Even at a 15-degree angle, you might as well be carrying 27 pounds of weight. That's because a human head weighs 10 to 12 pounds, and tilting it forward increases gravity's pull on it.
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All that tilting is, unsurprisingly, not good for your spine, researchers say after making their findings using a computer model of a spine. "These [cervical spine] stresses," they write, "may lead to early wear, tear, degeneration, and possibly surgeries." Their advice, per CBS News: "While it is nearly impossible to avoid the technologies that cause these issues, individuals should make an effort to look at their phones with a neutral spine and to avoid spending hours each day hunched over." (25% of us admit to texting in the bathroom, and that's not all.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Texting Puts 60 Pounds of Weight on Your Neck
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