What is a Text Neck?

Nowadays everybody spent lots of their time looking at their phones. And most people look at the phone with a flexed-down neck. This will cause overstretching of the posterior neck and upper back muscles. And then all muscles present in front of the neck get tight. this tightness of neck muscle causes neck pain which is called text neck.

Symptoms:

• Pain in your neck.
• Pain radiates to one side of your neck, shoulder blade, or arm.
• Tingling & Numbness in your arm and hand.
• Stiffness in your neck, or difficulty lifting your head up after looking down for a long period of time.

Physiotherapy Management of Text neck:

Posture correction exercises.

Electrotherapy treatment with-

• Combo therapy,
• High-intensity class 4 laser therapy, and
• SIS for cervical spine mobilization.

Chin tuck- While sitting on a chair or on the floor, keep your spine erect and push your chin back. You can start by putting a finger on your chin, & then tucking it in. For 4 to 5 seconds hold this position then relax.

Chin tuck lying down- you will be in a lying position, roll up a towel & put it right in the curve of your neck > now do a chin tuck while lying on your back. With your neck Try to push the towel. For 3 to 5 seconds hold this chin tuck then relax. Do this 12-15 times.

Stretching of the pectoralis (chest) muscles- Start with the scapular squeeze, pretend that you have a ball between your scapula and you have to squeeze it with the medial border of your scapula

Upper back stretching exercise- You will be in a prone lying position > take a pillow under the in-between stomach & chest area > grab one hand with the other and put it on your lower back > keep your neck in a neutral position > and come up (upper back extension). Hold for a few seconds and then come back down.

Home advice- Use your phone always at your eye level, and use your arm rather than your neck to see mobiles.

Avoid prolonged static posture.

Along with these treatments we also have:

• Soft tissue mobilization technique,
• Cupping therapy,
• Dry needling therapy,
• Kinesio taping.