Mark Stoller and his wife, Andra, moved to Falcon with their family in 2007. Both are U.S. Air Force veterans and enjoy life with their daughters, extended family and adopted rescue dogs in Latigo. Mark is fortunate to have his wife and daughters as his muse for topics, people to meet and places to investigate.
Tools & “Tech Neck”
By Mark Stoller
I am going to start with a public service announcement: If you have tools/services — use them.
And now, the rest of the story:
During the last snowfall, I managed to stick my car in a snowbank. I was lazy about going to check on my chickens and decided to drive around to the coop at 11 p.m.
I didn’t realize how wet-packed the snow was and plowed the minivan into the middle of a three-foot drift. There was no other option than to leave the car overnight and try to free it the next day.
I pay annually for AAA service. My day would have gone a lot differently if I had called first thing in the morning to have AAA pull me out. Instead, I spent the majority of the day trying to dig out the car, with mounting frustration (read: became an unbearable ass by lunchtime).
So, my friends, if you have services you pay for — use them. If you purchase tools to make life easier in one way or another — use your tools.
Speaking of tools. Phones are tools the vast majority of humanity overuse for countless hours every day.
There is a new diagnosis called “Tech Neck” to define the unfortunate results of the posture when over-utilizing phones.
From the Cleveland Clinic, I learned text neck (or tech neck) is a syndrome that happens after a repeated amount of stress occurs in our neck area due to having our heads in a down-forward position. Your head is similar to a bowling ball — as it moves forward, it gets heavier. When you drop your head, your neck moves forward, shoulders get rounded forward or lifted up toward your ears, and neck and shoulder muscles spasm (contract).
This kind of consistent posture starts to affect not only your neck, but also your cervical spine, shoulder muscles and supporting ligaments. The associated pain from this kind of stress on your neck is due to looking down at our devices for long periods of time. A few minutes here or there won’t have much effect, but the accumulated duration of time every day is what causes damage to your spine and neck.
Neck muscles, in their proper position, are designed to support the weight of your head, which is about 10 to 12 pounds. For every 15 degrees that you flex your neck forward from a neutral position, the load on your neck muscles nearly doubles in weight: ie, looking down at your smartphone with your chin near your chest puts about 60 pounds of force on your neck.
To alleviate the negative effects of this posture, here are chiropractor approved stretches and strengthening exercises I found on https://healthline.
- The exaggerated nod — tilt your head back to look at the sky and then forward toward your toes.
- The yoga move “downward-facing dog” is useful for opening the chest wall and shoulders, which are often rounded/tightened from excessive tech usage.
- Chin tuck is a simple stretch to help increase spinal awareness while strengthening the neck muscles to help pull your head back into alignment. You can do this at your desk, at a stoplight, or even in a meeting at work.
- Bring the screen to eye level so your head is not slouched forward or too high. Instead, keep a neutral spine so your ear is in line with your shoulders.
- There is a text neck app for Android that offers “immediate real time feedback” about your posture, indicated by a green/red light and optional beep as a reminder to tell you when you’ve lapsed back into bad habits.
