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Those who spend an excessive amount of time in front of the television will experience pain. The cause and the effect are still not clear to researchers. Scandinavian researchers report that young people tend to experience back pains and headaches when they spend too much time in front of the television or computer monitor. More than 30,000 young people were examined by Torbjørn Torsheim and its team of scientists from the Norwegian University of Bergen. They were asked about their computer usage and television viewing habits. The longer the teenager spent in front of the television, the more often they experienced pain.
“There is an increasing number of complaints from young people of back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain and headaches,” says Torsheim. “Parallel to the number of complaints is an increase in the amount of time spent in front of screens.” The researchers wanted to know, therefore, if there is a connection. Following the study, results showed that with girls there appears to be a direct connection between throbbing headaches and television viewing habits or computer usage. Torsheim and his colleagues assume that it is simply dependent on the total time spent in front of the screens. In addition, sitting in front of monitors is, according to scientists, certainly a cause for the pain they are experiencing, but it’s not necessarily the main reason. That could well be found elsewhere - for example, as a result of a lack of exercise or participation in sporting activities among young people. If that were to be true then the link between screen time and pain is a symptom of a lack of movement and exercise. Researchers are still to find out if that’s really the case.
(Apotheken-Umschau of 9 June 2010/BMC Public Health)
photo: Juttaschnecke / photocase.com
