Computer, TV can give you backaches and headaches
By IANSWednesday, June 9, 2010
LONDON - Being glued to TV or computer screens for long hours can give you backaches and headaches, says a new study that surveyed more than 30,000 teenagers.
Torbjørn Torsheim of the University of Bergen, Norway, worked with an international team of researchers to study the association between ’screen time’ and a headache or a backache.
“A rising prevalence of physical complaints such as back pain, neck and shoulder pain, and headache has been reported for adolescent populations,” said Torsheim.
“Parallel to this, adolescents are spending an increasing amount of time on screen-based activities, such as TV, computer games, or other types of computer based entertainment,” added Torsheim.
The researchers found that there was little interaction between specific types of screen-based activity and particular physical complaints, with the exception of headaches in girls, which seemed to be linked with computer use and TV viewing but not gaming.
Torsheim and colleagues suggest this indicates that physical complaints are not related to the type of screen-based activity, but to the duration and ergonomic aspects of such activity.
The amount of time teenagers spend in front of TV screens and monitors has been associated with physical complaints, said a University of Bergen release.
These findings, based on 30,000 Nordic teenagers, have been published in BMC Public Health.
