What mobile phone overuse does to your neck and eyes
- 5 years ago
Time now for our "Life & Info" segment,... where we focus on information that's useful for your everyday life whether you are in Korea or somewhere else in the world.
These days almost everyone has a smartphone,... and is using it all day long.
Today we will talk about some useful tips to reduce the negative health effects that come from overuse of smartphones.
We have our Choi Si-young in the studio to tell us about these health issues and how to reduce them.
So Si-young, what are some of the problems caused by smartphones?
Well, Mark the most common health problem is neck pain,... because people tilt the head forward while using the phone, and this puts weight on the neck.
Tilting the head forward for too long causes repeated stress and pain.
Now your neck is supposed to have a natural curve as you can see on the left of this picture.
But as you keep tilting your head forward for a long period time, looking at your smartphone, that curve becomes straighter. The curve helps to better distribute weight. Without it, the neck cannot distribute weight, so you get pain.
Right, then what can you do to keep that curve or to regain that curve if you already have neck pain?
Well, I've got some tips from some doctors on just how to do that.
Why don't we take a listen?
"If the pain isn't too bad, you can just do simple neck stretches, but if the pain doesn't go easily, you could have a physical therapist relax your muscles around the neck in a way that recovers your original curve."
So try neck stretches,... moving your left ear toward your left shoulder and then your right ear to your right shoulder,... but if that doesn't work, your cervical disk or "shock absorber" in the neck may be displaced.
Then you could have a physical therapist treat you.
The physical therapist helps to put the disk back in its correct place and make the neck curved again,.. using hands to apply different pressures on the neck.
This is something you can't do alone.
It looks like once your neck becomes straight, it takes some serious time and effort to recover?
Yes. But if you find about your neck problems early and do these stretches and perhaps therapy, your neck will regain its curve.
Let's take a look at this x-ray. You can see the neck regaining its curve. This patient received therapy over about two months. Now when doing the stretches and therapy, remember one thing: No tilting too long with your smartphone because that will cause your neck to straighten again.
Well, thanks for the tips. Now,... other than these neck problems, what else do we have worry about from using smartphones too much?
Evidently, our eyes get stressed out too from looking at the screen too much.
But more importantly, smartphones emit blue light, and experts say much exposure to this light is harmful to our eyes.
First, let's see what this light is. If you look at this light spectrum on the right of the picture, blue light comes from rays on the blue end of the spectrum.
We get most of our expo
These days almost everyone has a smartphone,... and is using it all day long.
Today we will talk about some useful tips to reduce the negative health effects that come from overuse of smartphones.
We have our Choi Si-young in the studio to tell us about these health issues and how to reduce them.
So Si-young, what are some of the problems caused by smartphones?
Well, Mark the most common health problem is neck pain,... because people tilt the head forward while using the phone, and this puts weight on the neck.
Tilting the head forward for too long causes repeated stress and pain.
Now your neck is supposed to have a natural curve as you can see on the left of this picture.
But as you keep tilting your head forward for a long period time, looking at your smartphone, that curve becomes straighter. The curve helps to better distribute weight. Without it, the neck cannot distribute weight, so you get pain.
Right, then what can you do to keep that curve or to regain that curve if you already have neck pain?
Well, I've got some tips from some doctors on just how to do that.
Why don't we take a listen?
"If the pain isn't too bad, you can just do simple neck stretches, but if the pain doesn't go easily, you could have a physical therapist relax your muscles around the neck in a way that recovers your original curve."
So try neck stretches,... moving your left ear toward your left shoulder and then your right ear to your right shoulder,... but if that doesn't work, your cervical disk or "shock absorber" in the neck may be displaced.
Then you could have a physical therapist treat you.
The physical therapist helps to put the disk back in its correct place and make the neck curved again,.. using hands to apply different pressures on the neck.
This is something you can't do alone.
It looks like once your neck becomes straight, it takes some serious time and effort to recover?
Yes. But if you find about your neck problems early and do these stretches and perhaps therapy, your neck will regain its curve.
Let's take a look at this x-ray. You can see the neck regaining its curve. This patient received therapy over about two months. Now when doing the stretches and therapy, remember one thing: No tilting too long with your smartphone because that will cause your neck to straighten again.
Well, thanks for the tips. Now,... other than these neck problems, what else do we have worry about from using smartphones too much?
Evidently, our eyes get stressed out too from looking at the screen too much.
But more importantly, smartphones emit blue light, and experts say much exposure to this light is harmful to our eyes.
First, let's see what this light is. If you look at this light spectrum on the right of the picture, blue light comes from rays on the blue end of the spectrum.
We get most of our expo