Tech neck?

Are you suffering with tech neck?

Recently I have been treating 13 y.o girls,  for tech neck and anxiety. The problem is, when the neck and the top joint near the head, is tight and out of alignment, this can cause anxiety. Find me a teen without tech neck. Please! It seems like every teen spends most of their free time looking at a screen. Texting, or typing. On a phone or tablet. These growing and developing bodies are spending hours each day hunched over a device.

I have a 13 y.o daughter. She has grown quickly and is way taller than me. The taller we are the more exaggerated tech neck looks. The head is heavy, really heavy. Craning over a device for hours stiffens the neck and tightens the occipital base, the joint between the skull and the neck. This can cause depression, anxiety, jaw problems, sleep disorders and headaches. These are all the symptoms I am regularly seeing in my teen clients.

Proper alignment in the bones in the skull and the neck are essential for hormone balance and nerve supply to the body. The tenth cranial nerve, the vagus nerve, plays a part in digestion. Compression at the base of the skull is responsible for much of the irritable bowel syndrome, we hear about today. Most of my clients suffer from a stiff neck. Whether their driving complaint is snoring, sleep apnoea, jaw disfunction, headaches or any other problem. The occipital base is such an important joint in the body and our love of devices is increasing its disfunction.

So what is to be done about tech neck?

I recommend staying hydrated, holding the device at eye level and yoga stretches. Whether we can get out teens to follow these recommendations is another story. But we can always lead by example.