Text Neck: It's a Thing and Physical Therapy Can Help
Text neck isn’t an official diagnosis but it’s an official pain in the neck. Recent years have taught both doctors and patients that spending hours sitting hunched over a phone causes a stress injury. Since cell phones aren’t going the way of the dinosaur anytime soon, we at PT Concepts in the greater Dallas Fort Worth Area want to help protect your neck so you can keep on texting.
The 101 On Text Neck
Text neck refers to a collection of symptoms spawned by spending too much time on your phone, tablet computer, portable gaming device, and so on. Text neck symptoms tend to include:
- Headache
- Neck pain
- Upper back pain
- Shoulder pain
- Reduced mobility
- Rounded posture
- Pain when you flex your head forward
Pain and symptoms vary from person to person.
Your head weighs somewhere between 10 and 12lbs, which isn’t so bad when your head is upright. However, tilting your head just one degree forward adds approximately another pound of pressure. So if you tilt your head 45º, then that’s around 50lbs of pressure, instead of 10-12, on your neck and spine. Doing that to yourself for hours on end, day after day hurts. And thus text neck became a thing.
That tilt stretches the muscles in the back of your neck while doing the reverse in front. Our physical therapists will work to stretch and strengthen each patient’s neck back into proper balance. We’ll also send you off with stretching and exercise homework that’ll help further protect and strengthen your neck.
How Physical Therapy Helps Text Neck
We realize that good help and guidance are vital. To this end we are committed to you and your health to treat through a multidisciplinary rehabilitation approach and to educate in the care and maintenance of the body.
We aim to treat you with dignity and respect with the hope that you might enjoy a life filled with movement and purpose. We cultivate health and well-being through cutting-edge treatments, education, and support in proper health maintenance.
Have questions or need to schedule an appointment? Go online and fill out our contact form, and one of our five locations will get in touch.
Posted In:
Physical Therapy
Neck Pain Treatment
Text Neck
