The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Mobile phones are a real pain in the neck

The technical term is spondylitis

  • print
  • alert

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

The horror stories: A woman blocked her neck arteries after a half hour phone conversation while doing the ironing, and a man lost the use of his arm for a month after holding the phone in the crook of his neck, damaging a nerve. Holding your telephone the wrong way can kill you. Well, not quite, but physiotherapists are saying that cradling a phone receiver between your shoulder and your ear can lead to a form of repetetive strain injury. This new phenomenon, dubbed telephonitis, is the newest in a long line of so-called "occupational diseases", for which there seems to be a current vogue. Both mobile phone users and landline users are at risk, according to researchers at Surrey University, but the really dangerous specimens are new slimline phones. A report by occupational therapist Elizabeth Simpson warns that constantly hunching ones shoulder to hold a telephone can damage delicate bones in the spine and upper shoulder, and the further one hunches - as with a slimmer phone -- the worse the damage. Simpson says it is a common problem. "We found that half of all office workers in the city who use a phone and a computer simultaneously suffer from neck pain. Old style phones were quite bulky, but the slimline models meant you had to hold your shoulder up even higher." According to Jill Belch, professor of Rheumatology at Dundee University, the condition is known as: "mobile phone spondylitis, which can cause pain in the neck, head and shoulders." It sounds like another argument for hands-free set to us. Alternatively, we could all go and live in caves. ® Mobile phones are a pain in the neck -- and links to five phone brain maim stories

Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider

More from The Register

Thanks, NSA: Amazon sales of Orwell's 1984 rise 9,500%
Citizens of Oceania bone up on the new reality
 breaking news
BBC lied to Parliament about doomed £100m IT monster, thunder MPs
Axed DMI ballooned and burst while watchdogs sang Kumbaya
Microsoft to open Windows Stores inside 600 Best Buy locations
Product showcases 'must be seen to be believed'
 breaking news
Author Iain (M) Banks falls to cancer at 59
Misses the release of his final work
 breaking news
What did the Lehman Brothers implosion look like to a techie?
Insider tells all about the Gnab Gib at Lehmans
It's official: 'tweet' an English word – not just in the avian sense
If the Oxford English Dictionary says it is so, then it is so
 breaking news
The only Waze is Google: Ad giant tipped to gobble map app 'for $1.3bn'
Pac-Man-satnav-ish upstart in bidding war with Apple, Facebook
 breaking news
1-in-10 e-tomes 'are self-published'... most are 'rubbish' says book ed
Publishing man scoffs at go-it-alone writers, ursines still fouling in forests
 breaking news