TEXTING TWINGES
If you're suddenly feeling back pain, you might want to rethink your current texting habits.
The New York Daily News reports on a new study published by Surgical Technology International claiming that the seemingly effortless act of bending your head at a 60-degree angle while texting puts 60 pounds of pressure on your cervical spine (the section of the spine situated just above the shoulders).
And since the typical person apparently spends an average of between two and four hours each day sending and receiving texts, reports the Daily News, that translates into a whole lot of back pain.
"The weight seen by the spine dramatically increases when flexing the head forward at varying degrees," author Dr. Kenneth Hasraj, who also serves as chief of spine surgery at New York's Spine Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine clinic, writes in the study.
But wait, it gets worse: "Loss of the natural curve of the cervical spine leads to incrementally increased stresses about the cervical spine," Hasraj told the Daily News. "These stresses may lead to early wear, tear, degeneration and possibly surgeries."
The study points out that the average adult human head weighs between 10 and 12 pounds when in the upright or neutral position, but due to gravitational pull, the cranium becomes heavier the more you bend your neck.
As such, tilting your head a mere 15 degrees puts an added 27 pounds of pressure on your spine; a tilt of 30 degrees is equal to an extra 40 pounds of pressure, while a 45-degree tilt is akin to 49 pounds.
All of a sudden, texting your appetizer order to friends while running late doesn't seem so important, right?
The good news is that most of those backaches can be remedied by the simplest of solutions: Stand up straighter.
Bad posture has been linked to all manner of medical maladies, including headaches and neurological problems, along with depression, constipation and even heart disease.
The study defines correct posture as "ears aligned with the shoulders and the 'angel wings' or the shoulder blades, retracted."
Of course, the study authors seem to realize that the health risks of texting aren't likely to steer people away from the modern convenience of near-immediate contact.
"While it is nearly impossible to avoid the technologies that cause these issues, individuals should make an effort to look at their phones with a neutral spine and to avoid spending hours each day hunched over," Hasraj writes in the study.
Meanwhile, the technology of texting is moving in the opposite direction.
Last week saw the release of the new Android messaging app called Beam Messenger, which actually lets users view text messages at the exact instant they're being typed.
NAKED AMBITION
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi have drawn inspiration from Kim Kardashian for this year's holiday card. On Monday's edition of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the host unveiled her annual festive card showing a photo-shopped version of the pair naked and affecting the same pose made famous by Kardashian in her recent Paper magazine layout. "This is the time of year where you have to order your holiday cards," said DeGeneres. "As you know, Portia and I started working on our holiday cards…and this is the second one we came up with."
Source: E! News
OPPOSITES ATTRACT
A video mashup merging elements of Breaking Bad and Frozen is rapidly going viral. Titled "Do You Want To Build a Meth Lab," the video from YouTube collective Animeme spins off the Frozen song Do You Want To Build a Snowman and shows an animated version of chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-kingpin Walt White beseeching a reluctant Jesse to join him in his burgeoning drug empire. As of mid-Tuesday, the video had garnered more than 2.8-million views on YouTube.
Source: People
VAPE ON
Oxford Dictionaries Online has declared "vape" its annual word of the year. The term, a verb to describe the ingestion of a substance through a vaporizer, has come into common public usage through repeated use online and popular culture. "It's hard to anticipate what's going to capture the public imagination at any given moment," said Oxford Dictionaries president Casper Grathwohl. "Vape only really caught on a few years ago and now we've seen a dramatic rise." Making the Oxford shortlist this year was the term "budtender" (a person who serves customers in a cannabis dispensary) and "normcore" (a trend wherein unfashionable clothing is deliberately worn to make a bold fashion statement).
Source: Gizmodo
GERM ALERT
Try to keep the smooching to a minimum this upcoming holiday season. A new study published in the journal Microbiome claims that locking lips for ten seconds is long enough to transfer roughly 80-million bacteria between two human mouths. The study also revealed that couples are more likely to have similar oral bacterial colonies than complete strangers kissing each other. On the upside, the study says that exposure to a broader range of bacteria can help increase the body's ability to resist infection.
Source: New York Magazine