Hornlike bony projections are developing at the back of the skulls of young people due to incessant mobile phone usage!
What are these hornlike spikes on the back of the skulls of young people? Biomechanical research has shown that young people are developing bony spurs on their skulls back due to the forward tilt of their heads for long hours.
Mobiles might be considered a good invention but it has their share of ill effects.
Mobile technology and its impact on the skull of users
Mobiles have taken the world by storm. Sometimes, the newer technology in mobiles is way ahead of what humans need for a comfortable living.
It has long been argued that constant mobile usage leads to brain cancers. But newer biomedical research has also found that mobiles can remold human skeletons and specifically skulls. They lead to hornlike bony projections.
Biomedical research has suggested that young people who use a mobile phone on a larger scale are developing hornlike spurs on the back of their skulls. These are seen as spikes (enthesophytes) jutting out of the skull just above the neck. They measure at least 3-5 millimeters in length.
The reason for this skull remolding
Mobile phone users mostly are young people. While using the phones, they tilt their heads to the front. This causes the weight to shift from the spine to the muscles at the back of the head.
Constant weight-bearing by the back-of-head muscles leads to bone growth taking place in the connecting ligaments and tendons. This appears as the bony spike in X-rays of the skull and head of these young mobile phone users.
Two researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia state that the young people who are on the phone for most of the day tend to position their heads in a forward position.
This shift of weight causes spurs formation at the back of their skulls. These hand-held devices are contorting the human form. The users keep their heads bending forward to make sense of what is displayed on the miniature screens.
This is the first research into the impact of mobile phones on human skulls. It is the first study that documents the physiological or skeletal adaptation due to the seizure of our everyday life by modern technology.
The other skeletal and postural problems of mobile users
The doctors from the clinical specialties are increasingly seeing cases of the impact of mobile usage on the body of the patients. There is a diagnosis made of ‘text neck’ and ‘texting thumb’. The latter is something similar to carpal tunnel syndrome. But no one had yet documented the research on the bone-deep changes with excess mobile phone usage.
The Spurs are considered a ‘degenerative’ process and the authors of the current research paper have asked:
“An important question is what the future holds for the young adult populations in our study, when development of a degenerative process is evident in such an early stage of their lives?”
Though this study is one year old, a BBC story on it was recent. The Australian media also caught hold of it and have dubbed these bone spurs in various ways such as ‘head horns’, ‘phone bones’, ‘spikes’, or ‘weird bumps’.
The first author David Shahar told Washington Post:
“That is up to anyone’s imagination. You may say it looks like a bird’s beak, a horn, a hook.”
He also said that chronic headaches and pain in the upper back and neck accompany these bony spurs.
Source: gadgets 360, Washington Post
