Have you ever woken up in the morning with a headache, or a stiff neck, and thought to yourself  “huh. . .I must have slept funny?”

Believe it or not, when it comes to morning neck pain and headaches, your posture from the day before could be the culprit.

Here’s a brief explanation.  The weight of the human head averages 7-9% of your total body weight (De Leva 1996). So if you weigh 150 pounds, your head weighs nearly 15 pounds – heavier than most bowling balls!

Now imagine a bowling ball sitting on top of your shoulders in place of your head.  If you slouch forward or backwards, the ball would roll off and crash on the floor.  So what keeps your head from flopping around like the dead weight of a bowling ball?  The answer is the coordinated effort of your posture muscles to balance your head on your skeletal frame (your spine and shoulder girdles).

So here’s the tie-in to waking up with neck pain.  If you spend only a few minutes a day on your smartphone, you probably aren’t affected, but then you are also not the average smartphone user.  According to a research by Flurry Analytics, the average smartphone and tablet user will open apps on their device about 16 times per day.  If that adds up to 30-60 minutes in a day, that is a lot of time where your head is being virtually pulled toward your mobile device.  Every minute where your head is NOT centered on your frame, you are adding strain to the muscles in the back and sides of your neck (the most common muscles strained are the Levator, Upper Trapezius, and Sternocleidomastoid or SCM).   Imagine the force it takes to hold back the 15 pound bowling ball. . . it’s a LOT of force.  Those muscles are quickly overworked, but if you do this every day you hardly notice the strain, it may just feel like you are “a little tense”.  But then you go to bed and your body needs to repair the strain to the affected muscles.  This repair process causes inflammation. You feel it in the form of a headache, or pain and stiffness after you wake up in the morning – it’s kind of like a technology hangover.  This pain can come on at any time of the day.

So is it time to ditch the smartphone and resist our participation in the New Media Age?  Definitely not, you just need to follow some rules, such as:

1. Keep your smartphone up, as close to eye level as possible
2. Don’t look at your smartphone when lying in bed.  It’s tempting, but if you do it’s nearly impossible to keep your head and spine properly aligned.
3. Use a variety of positions when interacting with your smartphone.
4. Be ambidextrous (and use both hands).  Don’t always hold it with your left and type with your right, switch it up.
5. Every now and then go sit at your actual computer to check social media or read web articles, like in the old days.   Make sure the screen is at eye level, and add a keyboard tray and mouse at elbow level.   DO NOT put a laptop on your lap while sitting on the couch, this is even worse for your posture than the smartphones.

There are a lot more tips but really it comes down to being aware of your posture and taking care of your body.

If you have been violating the above rules, and even worse if you are what Flurry Analytics considers a “mobile addict” (a user opening apps 60 times a day or more), this article is showing you where your neck pain and/or headaches are most liekly coming from.

So what’s next for managing the pain and/or headaches you’ve had for some time?  Try physical therapy. Therapists are trained with techniques that help people reduce the symptoms of tension headaches, back, and neck pain.   We hire only the most skilled physical therapy team to manage neck pain and headaches.  After receiving therapeutic massage, heat treatments and individually designed exercises to meet your needs, you can look forward to waking up to NO neck pain, just like you did a few years back when all you had in your pocket was a flip-phone.