In the age of cell phones, Kindles, and iPads, we are no stranger to warnings about spending too much time with our tech. While we know these are beneficial tools, using them at the neglect of proper posture can do significant physiological damage. “Smartphone slouching” is not just an alliterative term for avoiding talking to people in grocery store lines. It is a prevalent issue that can amount to spinal damage such as disc degeneration or nerve complications.

Tech Neck

On average, American adults spend more than 3.5 hours on their phones each day. Many also work hunched over computers for 40+ hours a week. This can lead to squinting or other straining of the eyes, which has been researched thoroughly, and it often leaves people  slouching for extended periods of time. This old problem with posture, renewed with our dependence on screen-specific technology, has been coined “tech neck” or “text neck.”

Giving the condition a cutesy rhyming name may be doing the population in general a disservice, for the spinal adjustments that come from smartphone slouching can actually be quite serious. Poor posture can lead to chronic pain all down the spine, which in turn can lead to other conditions like heartburn and problems in the circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems.

In a Slump

Why is smartphone slouching so bad? The body, for all its resilience, is actually quite sensitive to even the slightest misalignment. The problem isn’t just when you’re scrolling through social media: any time the body stays in a less-than-optimal position, your spine is strained. People need to be aware of their spinal positions as they sit at their desks or on the couch, as they curl up with a book or sit down for dinner. 

The body will naturally try to compensate when the spine is out of alignment, but unfortunately this can lead to more health problems. If you find yourself walking with rounded shoulders and short steps, your head and neck bent down, it is well-past time to seek help for your posture. Whether you catch yourself smartphone slouching or not, posture improvement is critical for overall wellness.

Cell phones get the brunt of the attention for bad posture because we spend so much time looking at them, and when we do, it is easy to get lost in what we are doing, not giving thought to our posture. Often our objective in being on our phones is to disconnect, to relax, but it is important to not let that downtime hurt our long-term spinal health.

An Extra 60 Pounds

The human head weighs, on average, about 10 pounds. Your spine already supports what is effectively a bowling ball every minute of every day. Your arms would have a difficult time doing that comfortably. If that is not was not enough, each time you tilt your head forward or bend it down, the force of gravity pulls at your head, compounding its weight as felt by your neck. 

Effectively, for every inch you incline your head forward, 10 pounds of pressure is added to your cervical spine. That is the rough equivalent of a four-year-old child sitting on your shoulders the entire time you’re checking your Bitcoin or Instagram. If you tilt your head 60 degrees, that amounts to an extra 60 pounds of force on your neck.  

Fighting Back Against Smartphone Slouching

Damage to the spine caused by bad posture is usually caused by years of straining over computers and phones, depending on usage. The good news is that some such damage is reversible with proper care. Licensed chiropractors and other clinical professionals can give specific recommendations for how best to treat each case.

Tech neck and other posture problems can be treated with designated stretches and core strength training, but for lasting improvement, behavioral changes need to be adopted. Training exercises that mimic daily life can be helpful, but postural vigilance is the only preventative for further damage. 

Those who work at a desk or spend significant time working at a computer should keep computer monitors at eye level, with both feet squarely on the floor. Standing desks are wonderful for improving posture. As a rule of thumb, if you spend lengthy periods of time looking at a screen, take frequent breaks to get up, stretch, and move around. 

Correcting Posture at Utah Sports and Wellness

You do not have to figure out how to improve your posture on your own. Our team at Utah Sports and Wellness is here to help. With techniques like spinal decompression and massage, we can relieve pressure on your spine caused by smartphone slouching and help you find better patterns for spending time on your computer or phone.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is classified as progressive brain degeneration apparently caused by repeated head trauma or multiple occasions of concussion. An increasingly studied pathology, CTE is common in athletes who experience cranial damage, e.g. players of American football, rugby, ice hockey, wrestling, mixed martial arts, and soccer. The world’s most popular sport, soccer is frequently played by about 250 million people in over 200 countries. Especially in headers of the beautiful game, CTE is a prominent threat, one that can only be properly diagnosed after death.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

CTE was first classified in reference to boxers, calling those experiencing a state of progressive cognitive impairment that developed over a career of repeated head trauma “punch drunk.” “Fistfighter’s dementia,” “boxer’s madness,” and dementia pugilistica all followed in the line of nomenclature, though these terms were retired as awareness increased that the condition is not reserved for boxers alone. Nearly all athletic subjects examined have sustained some cognitive deficits, though a small minority are asymptomatic at time of death. 

CTE research has illustrated that the condition affects all players differently, resulting in usually one of two forms of cerebral impairment: cognitive and behavioral. The initial features of the behavior (or mood) variant are consistently seen in players’ younger years, resulting in mood disturbances and behavior changes. For the rest of the players examined, cognitive impairment was observed later in life. This variant includes memory loss, executive dysfunction, gait impairment, and slurred speech.

CTE in Soccer Players

A study in the UK conducted from 1980 to 2010 observed 14 retired soccer players with signs of CTE. Over the 30-year span, players’ conditions were regularly observed until their deaths when, with familial permission, post-mortem autopsies were conducted. The research concluded that these retired soccer players sustained cognitive and structural changes to their brains related to their past prolonged exposure to repetitive concussive or subconcussive head impacts from heading and head-to-player collisions.

Parameters

On average, a professional soccer player heads the ball 6-12 times during each game. Over a 20-year career, players can perform at least 2,000 headers during professional  games, to say nothing of the number performed during practice. While head injuries can be sustained during the head-to-ball contact of heading the ball, significantly more soccer-related head injuries occur during head-to-head impact, when one player’s head collides with another’s.

Of those players studied for this research, all had played soccer for an average of 26 years. Each player was a skilled header, though only six had a history of concussion, one each. 

At Risk of CTE

All of the players examined developed progressive cognitive weakness, specifically those signs associated Alzhiemer’s pathology (dilatation of the third ventricle, tau pathologies, and septal irregularities). Cerebral signs of damage arose on average at the age of 63.6 years, and symptoms continued for an average of 10 years before death. 12 of the 14 players examined died from advanced neurodegenerative disease.

Though concussions receive a lot of press and can cause severe trauma to the brain, they are not a prerequisite for CTE. Many blows to the head do not result in concussion and evident neurological symptoms. However, if subtle neuropsychiatric deficits follow a head injury that does not yield concussion, it is referred to as subconcussion. Though only six of the 14 soccer players had history of concussion, all of the players developed CTE pathologies.

For all six cases with concussion history, neuropathological investigation revealed septal irregularities, indicative of a history of repetitive head collisions. 67% of these cases had pathologically confirmed CTE with conditions that included Alzheimer’s disease, hippocampal sclerosis, dementia, and others.

Protecting Players

The study funded by The Drake Foundation in the UK discovered that retired soccer players with a past history of repetitive head impacts have an increased risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), resulting in dementia and motor impairments. As soccer is so well-loved across the world, this correlation should be of considerable public health interest.

The pervasive nature of CTE among athletes in general and soccer players in particular warrants further systematic investigation. While symptoms are pervasive in these athletes, large-scale studies are needed to more precisely identify at-risk groups and causitory behaviors. The further information this will bring will justify the implementation of protective strategies.

As currently diagnosis of CTE can only be confirmed by neuropathological examination, there is an opportunity to better diagnose and treat the underlying pathology of CTE, in soccer players and otherwise. Diagnostic methods of ascertaining levels of the TDP-43 protein, which is brain protein found in patients with dementia, and monitoring the progress of its pathology must be improved if we are to better identify and treat CTE cases.

This week from Dr. Cerami and Utah Sports and Wellness

From: British Medical Journal, February 2018

Quick Summary:

This study was the first to evaluate the association between the consumption of ultra-processed food products and the incidence of cancer, specifically breast, prostate and colorectal cancer. The authors calculated the percentage of the participant’s diet that was comprised of ultra-processed foods. They then compare the risk of cancer between the highest 25% consumption to the lowest 25% consumption. The top 25% had a diet of 32% from ultra-processed foods. The bottom 25% had a diet of 8% from ultra-processed foods. This resulted in the top 25% having a 23% increased risk of cancer compared to the bottom 25%. The greatest risk cancer was breast cancer. For post-menopausal in the highest 25% there was a 38% increased risk of breast cancer. For pre-menopausal in the highest 25% there was a 27% increased risk of breast cancer. “These results suggest that the rapidly increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods may drive an increasing burden of cancer in the next decades.”

Abstract:

104 980 participants aged at least 18 years (median age 42.8 years) from the French NutriNet-Santé cohort (2009-17). Dietary intakes were collected using repeated 24 hour dietary records, designed to register participants’ usual consumption for 3300 different food items. These were categorised according to their degree of processing by the NOVA classification. Ultra-processed food intake was associated with higher overall cancer risk (n=2228 cases; hazard ratio for a 10% increment in the proportion of ultra-processed food in the diet 1.12 (95% confidence interval 1.06 to 1.18); P for trend<0.001) and breast cancer risk (n=739 cases; hazard ratio 1.11 (1.02 to 1.22); P for trend=0.02). These results remained statistically significant after adjustment for several markers of the nutritional quality of the diet (lipid, sodium, and carbohydrate intakes and/or a Western pattern derived by principal component analysis). In this large prospective study, a 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed foods in the diet was associated with a significant increase of greater than 10% in risks of overall and breast cancer. Further studies are needed to better understand the relative effect of the various dimensions of processing (nutritional composition, food additives, contact materials, and neoformed contaminants) in these associations.

These authors also note:

• Cancer represents a major worldwide burden, with about 14.1 million new cases diagnosed yearly.
• The World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research indicates that about a third of the most common cancers could be avoided by changing lifestyle and dietary habits in developed countries.
•  The most important modifiable risk factors in the primary prevention of
  cancer are:
  • Avoidance of Tobacco
  • Reduction in Alcohol Intake
  • Having a balanced and diversified diet
• “During the past decades, diets in many countries have shifted towards a dramatic increase in consumption of ultra-processed foods.”
•  Surveys in Europe, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Brazil indicate that consumption of ultra-processed food products contribute to between 25% and
  50% of total daily energy intake.
  • Ultra-processed foods have undergone multiple physical, biological, and/or
  chemical processes.
  • Ultra-processed foods are conceived to be microbiologically safe, convenient,
  highly palatable, and affordable.
• “Several characteristics of ultra-processed foods may be involved in causing disease, particularly cancer.”
• These foods have “neoformed contaminants, some of which have carcinogenic properties (such as acrylamide, heterocyclic amines, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and are present in heat treated processed food products as a result of the Maillard [glycation] reaction.”
• “The packaging of ultra-processed foods may contain some materials in contact with food for which carcinogenic and endocrine disruptor properties have been postulated, such as bisphenol A.”
• “Ultra-processed foods contain authorized, but controversial, food additives such as sodium nitrite in processed meat or titanium dioxide (white food pigment), for which carcinogenicity has been suggested in animal or cellular models.”
• “The association with overall cancer risk was statistically significant in all strata of the population investigated.”
• Ultra-processed foods have a “higher glycemic response and a lower satiety effect.”
• The wide range of additives contained in ultra-processed foods may be cumulative: more than 250 different additives are authorized for addition to food products in Europe and the US.
• Long-term exposure to aspartame or other artificial sweeteners may promote cancer.
• Nitrosamines in meats, including sodium nitrite, may cause colorectal cancer.
• “Rapidly increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods may drive an increasing burden of cancer and other non-communicable diseases.”
•  “These results suggest that the rapidly increasing consumption of ultraprocessed foods may drive an increasing burden of cancer in the next decades.”
• “Policy actions targeting product reformulation, taxation, and marketing restrictions on ultra-processed products and promotion of fresh or minimally

The ultra-processed foods assessed included:
• Mass produced packaged breads and buns
• Sweet or savory packaged snacks
• Industrialized confectionery and desserts
• Sodas and sweetened drinks
• Meat balls, poultry and fish nuggets, and other reconstituted meat products
• Instant noodles and soups
• Frozen or shelf stable ready meals
• Food products made mostly or entirely from sugar, oils and fats
• Hydrogenated oils, modified starches, and protein isolates
• Industrial processes including hydrogenation, hydrolysis, extruding, molding, reshaping, and pre-processing by frying
• Flavoring agents, colors, emulsifiers, humectants, non-sugar sweeteners, and other cosmetic additives are often added to these products to imitate
sensorial properties