02 Feb Technology and your Brain
As smart phones get smarter, society’s health gets weaker. The effect of technology overuse is affecting communities at an astonishing rate. From poor posture to developmental delays, technology overuse is leading to a new generation of ill health outcomes.
Modern day adolescents are constantly over stimulated, and always connected to their devices, commonly without any connection to culture. Adults are more overstressed and sedentary than ever before.
In fact, 83% of professional workers check their emails after work, 66% take their technology with them on vacation, and more than 50% report sending emails while having a meal with family or friends. With the stress of keeping up with work, 73% of employees worry that they will be at a disadvantage at work if they disconnect or do not instantly respond to emails and messages (Goldsmith, 2016).
As workers become more fatigued and stressed out, they present with higher rates of postural decline, affecting their productivity and leading to common musculoskeletal complaints such as headaches, neck pain, tightness of the neck and shoulders, and low back pain. Postural decline at work results in increased absenteeism, burnout, a decrease in productivity, and lower job satisfaction.
Over connected students and adolescents aren’t much better. Researchers found that four of every five students had significant mental and physical distress, panic, confusion, and extreme isolation when forced to unplug from technology for an entire day (Hough, 2011). All of this stress by being disconnected for just one day!
Your Brain on Technology
Many people are presenting with sensory disassociation or sensory mismatch due to overstimulation of certain parts of their brain, but under-stimulation in other areas. For example, while watching videos on YouTube or scrolling through Facebook updates, the visual system is completely bombarded with messages and visual stimuli.
Vision is processed in the back of brain, in the occipital lobe. This area of the brain is completely over stimulated while the front part of the brain, the frontal lobe for reading, writing, and memory is completely under stimulated.
This sensory mismatch is resulting in changes of brain output that can lead to developmental delays in the classroom, poor social behaviours, ADHD, and depression. All of which can be overcome by detaching from your device.
The spine provides some help overcoming the issues
As our brain gets over-stimulated in certain areas and under-stimulated in others, proper function and movement of the spine becomes super important. Spinal motion and therefore stimulation of nerve receptors around the spine such as that provided by a chiropractic adjustment stimulate higher centres of the brain that get shut down from over use of technology.
So getting on the chiropractic table with regularity is a great tactic if your life involves heavy use of technology.
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