27 Nov The impact of Technology on your Health.
| Technology advances are both amazing yet scary. Research shows how bad sitting all day is for your health, yet with the boom in the internet many jobs rely just on doing that.
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| Then there are phones. Mobile phones used to be straightforward and just for making a call or sending a message. Nowadays as mobile phones tend to be smartphones, we can spend hours upon hours looking down at a screen with our head in a forward, hunched position. Technology is undoubtedly affecting our habits and our health. Many people are losing the ability to hold a conversation and to pay attention for extended periods of time. They are constantly dialled into these small screens as a means of escaping boredom. Human interaction is effected and appreciation of the moment and place you are in gets lost in a small screen.
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| Did you know that staring down at your device is like having an eight-year old sitting on your head while you’re standing? When you’re typing a message, reading an email or browsing the internet, you’re enduring about 25 kilograms of pressure. The average person spends two to four hours a day in this position. It is time to realise that not only is prolonged cell phone use affecting us socially, it’s also affecting us physically.
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| To determine if you’ve got good posture, you need to ensure that when viewed from the side your ears are aligned with your shoulders then mid hip, mid knee and mid ankle. Good posture lowers body stress and even decreases cortisol, however poor posture stresses the spine and may lead to chronic pain, tension and even more serious conditions.
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| A quick solution would be to put down our phones once and for all, but since that’s probably not a feasible option for many of us, you can try to hold your phone straight in front of you instead of bending your head down. Place your device at a 30-degree angle when typing or tapping to protect your wrists. Keep your neck and back straight rather than bent forward.
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My take home message and three points to consider are as follows:
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| Point 1. Turn off automated reminders on your phone so that you can’t get emails coming in nonstop. Choose a point in time when you want to receive your emails, activate that, look at your emails, and once that occurs, put your phone down and do not keep looking at your phone and needlessly looking at the internet.
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| Point 2. Remember to lift your arm so your phone is in front of your face, rather than tilting your head to look down at your phone in your lap. Just addressing this and improving your posture as you are looking at your phone will make a significant difference if over the course of days, months, weeks and years you adopt this healthy habit.
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| Point 3. From a social and human interaction perspective, once you arrive home at night, please turn your phone on to aeroplane mode or turn it off altogether. This will enable healthy conversation and interaction with your family and loved ones. It will also will reduce the amount of wi-fi radiation going through your house which also is a healthier choice.
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