I recently came across something interesting - has anyone heard of tech neck? My understanding is that it’s essentially a repetitive stress injury caused by bending your head downwards to look at phones, tablets, etc.

I never really thought about it before, but I have my head tilted down a lot, whether it’s when I’m on my phone, at my computer, in bed on an iPad, etc, and I’m wondering if this may be contributing to flicker sensitivity at all. Anyone ever experience anything similar?

I’m going to make a conscious effort to keep my neck straight while using those devices & try some neck exercises to see if there’s any difference.

Here’s an article with some more info -

https://www.everydayhealth.com/wellness/how-to-beat-tech-neck-and-why-its-so-bad-for-your-health/

    bkdo I've heard from several people now with "our" symptoms that they got significant relief by visiting a chiropractor for their neck. This is an excellent blog where the person got relief from a NUCCA chiropractor...after the first visit, he no longer needed prism glasses. He has other great blog posts such as this one.

    Like me, he thought chiropractors were quacks and never thought his neck was cause of this symptoms. I am in some Binocular Vision Dysfunction groups, too, and some people there are seeing chiropractors to try to help.

    I wouldn't let any chiropractor "adjust" my neck, but only one like a NUCCA chiropractor who specializes in the upper cervical region.

    This is a good quote:

    Upon being evaluated by Dr. Debby, it was determined that I had both a vertical and horizontal misalignment of my eyes and I was promptly prescribed a pair of prism glasses. The glasses helped alleviate some of my symptoms, although a lot of them persisted. Dr. Debby suspected an underlying neck condition and urged me to have my neck checked. I met a chiropractor who specialized in the upper neck, who confirmed I had a severe neck misalignment. A month after being under chiropractic care and having my neck back in proper alignment, my eyes were reevaluated. It was determined that my vertical misalignment had resolved and all I had left was the smallest amount of horizontal misalignment possible. There was a direct correlation between the misalignment of my neck and the misalignment of my eyes.

        ryans

        Yeah, I'm a little wary of chiropractors, but I'm definitely going to look into finding someone who can look at my neck. Have any of the people in your BVD group experienced relief from seeing chiropractors?

          Inspired by the blog mentioned by @ryans yesterday I went to a chiropractor for the first session. Unfortunately it was not a NUCCA member as it's impossible to find one in my country. For hours following the session I experienced some of symptoms I usually get from screens (even if I didn't use any device) like pain around my eyes and dizziness. After 10 minutes of session I was so tired I had to have a nap.
          I measured my heterophoria before and after chiropractic, but nothing has changed.
          It also didn't bring relief from my symptoms, however I consider continuing this kind of treatment as the symptoms I got right after the session gives me a hint that my problem may be somehow related and I would be foolish if I didn't give it a try for a month or two.

            Dominic Very interesting! I hope it helps you. If you keep reading that blog, it took months to get real big improvements. The fact is it causing the same symptoms could be a good thing...it's a similar story with vision therapy. Hoping this cures you!

              7 days later

              I wouldn't recommend letting a chiropractor touch your neck. I have a neck injury from years ago caused by one. Maybe a nucca one is different, but regular garden variety ones are no bueno.

              But yes, tech neck is real and I'm pretty sure at least 2 of my visual migraines were triggered by having my neck in a bad posture, suspicion that this is the case is because last time among other things I started massaging the base of my skull while the migraine was going on, and then it stopped. Implication there is blood flow/nerve pinch issue.

              I thought the same in terms of triggers. Had a series of osteopath appointments and there was a vast improvement in eye/head pressure. It needs consistent work though every single week.

              Dominic Please, never let chiropractors touch your neck again. Your symptoms became worse after the session because the chiropractor made your neck become worse.

              Believe me, I do know what I'm saying. I've been struggling with my neck problem for 7 years, and I've tried a lot of things. Chiropractic is the worst you can do to your health. I want to write a good post here about this problem, in order it to be displayed clearly.

              But now briefly: Deep in your neck, you have suboccipital muscles that are in spasm. (And yes, they are "very connected" with eyes). When someone does something with your neck, these muscles react like seatbelts in a car: they react to the stress and become more tense for safety reasons. The bad thing is they cannot relax by themselves after stress.

                  Marionberry998 I understand they can be dangerous in some cases. Have you seen this article? There are
                  special chiropractors, like NUCCA, that specialize in the neck and are more gentle than typical "adjustments".

                  If someone wanted to get their neck fixed, do you have any recommendation of not a chiropractor? An osteopath?

                    Dominic Assuming a chiropractor actually did damage to your neck, I think, it still proves your condition can be fixed with neck treatment.

                    I am not convinced a chiropractor actually did damage, though, when doing vision therapy exercises, it is normal to feel symptoms after doing lots of the exercises. Could be something similar is happening here, too.

                        ryans No, it can happen. In my case, I had told them not to do my neck and work on other stuff instead, but it had been a long time since I had been there and I guess they forgot. So what happened is that they cracked one side of my neck then moved to the other and I tensed up and they tried forcing it anyway and then it was never right again.

                        Not to mention of course the risk of aortic dissection which can happen with some people. Don't mess with your neck like that. Better to do gentle yoga stretches. It's much slower and will take much longer, but you don't have the risk of something going wrong right away.

                          5 days later

                          Dominic Hello again. Sorry for not replying for so long. You can check information here and here.

                          I use to have more symptoms than people describe here, because my situation was severe, but i go better with that treatment. I tried a lot of different methods (really a lot), I even got a surgery on my neck (!). So, as I said I know what I'm saying. If you want you can even call me via video chat, so I can prove everything I said or tell more about these methods. My email i.chaykovskiy@gmail.com

                              13 days later

                              I saw another chiropractor a week ago. He "treated" me harder than the previous one and as a result I feel worse. My neck is tense, got a new kind of headache and I have a feeling like my other symptoms worsened. Directly after the session I felt extremely dizzy, fatigued and my vision was blurry. Now I think it may be actually true that such practice may worsen our condition. In two weeks I'm going to have a "correction" done by specialists from Body Balance recommended by Marionberry998 . I'm not 100% sure if it's the source of my problem, but it looks safe enough to give it a go.

                                  Dominic

                                  I would like to contribute to the discussion as i have some experience on the subject. I am taking Alexander Technique lessons for some years now due to a chronic back problem. I can say pretty confidently that if someone does not have a specific physical issue e..g trauma form an accident, neck tension is there due to some reason(s). Personally i have neck and back tension for no apparent physical reason. Medical exams in the past 20 years have not shown any physical defect.

                                  My question regarding all these situational and focused treatments is that even if someone can release the neck tension through a specific process, how can someone be sure the tension wont accumulate again? Unless it is discovered what creates the neck tension and stop the muscle tension increase, it is impossible in my opinion to create a sustainable free neck condition.

                                  The first thing i discovered through the process is that it is impossible to adjust the neck tone unless the whole body is adjusted. It is just not possible the neck to be free if your feet, for example, are very tense.

                                  Personally movement habits from my childhood years were creating the back problems. My highly tensed neck muscles were compressing downwards the whole spine create paid in the low back area. Each and every movement i was making was so unintelligent in natural body terms that my body adjusted in strange ways to make the movement. Some of them was neck, belly, and feet tension increase.

                                  Once i discovered what set of tensions were created by the stimulus to move, i was able to stop increasing the neck tension from accumulating. In the end the neck and total body tension gets to where it should be. For every person the time to get to this state is very specific.

                                  In terms of the bad displays, I can use the above technique to accommodate any display, however i can sense that the display IS the stimulus to cause the tension. and this can't be good. Intuitively i feel the need to avoid it and search for devices that don't cause this tension increase. However during my day i keep the body tension under check because unfortunately i need to use many different devices due to my profession.

                                      Peter

                                      Hi, sorry for my bad English.

                                      Things work vice versa from what you wrote. The body always adjusts its position to the way the head is parallel to the ground. So, if there are spasms and tensions in the neck muscles, the head would be rotated and tilted. But we wouldn't notice it, because our whole body will bend in a way to head be parallel. It will lead to spasms all over the whole body, just because a few muscles in the neck are tense. There are scientific researches that state this, I saw one on frogs. Frogs got their necks injured and whole their body developed crooked.

                                      About your point how the method can release muscle tension. The method I gave the link for is based on pessimum, it's a neurobiological phenomenon, described by professor N.E. Vvedensky. To put it simply, the method resetы the control settings for muscle, and their tension gets to default settings. And there is no other way to do it. All other methods will just give a temporal effect or will make things worse, due to stress for muscles, neck, head, that will tense muscle even more due to seat belts effect.

                                      As I said, I was struggling a lot with this problem until I finally found a solution. I've got a lot of examinations, screenings. I even got these scars on my neck, due to needles wrong surgery one professor made me.

                                          4 days later

                                          Marionberry998 Good for you that it worked.

                                          To some people, with physical and perhaps extreme issues, this technique may work. But I am skeptical about the rest of the people who just have increased tension levels in the neck and the rest of the body caused by bad movement habits or other reasons like stage freight. For example actors or musicians complaint a lot of tension in the neck area, some even have partial voice loss because of the muscle stress.

                                          So is the hypothesis with this technique that whatever the cause of the neck tension, the neck muscles can remain calm? Personally i used to tense a lot in the neck and back because of old habits in place created in the school setting. I don't have any physical issue. It is just a bad habit. My back muscles contracted so intensely that my head pressed the whole spine towards the floor. Does Body Balance help is such settings? I am genuinely interested if this technique can relieve somehow such tensions.

                                              In the case of esophoria (a form of binocular vision dysfunction) it can be caused by tension, especially neck tension.

                                              See this post from a FB Group called Vision Therapy Parents Unite (it is mostly parents as vision therapy is common for children and less for adults, but there are adult patients too)...a vision therapist wrote this herself:

                                              I have been a vision therapist for 15 years. Recently, I started having trouble diverging my eyes. I was feeling tension above my eyes. I was also experiencing anxiety (so not like me), headaches, dizziness, and fatigue (sometimes extreme). I chalked up a lot of this to a recent surgery I had in November. My meridians in my head and neck were also blocked. I would have therapy to “unblock them” yet they would not remain open. I started suspecting cervical misalignment. We refer patients all the time for atlas orthogonal treatment. The ones that generally need it the most are those with a diagnosis of esophoria and esotropia. Eso is related to tension. If there is cervical misalignment creating constriction, it’s very possible it will be hard to diverge the eyes. I passed out this past August (related to medical issues that are now corrected, thankfully) and I’m convinced my cervical misalignment was related to that fall.

                                              I took my free space fusion card to my atlas orthogonal appointment. This is a wonderful doctor I’ve seen many times before. I could kick myself for not going to see him before now. Before the appointment I could not visually get the third image. I could not diverge my eyes. The dr found my atlas was out and from C2 down cervical area, I was shifted to the left four degrees. I’ve never had that much shift, ever. He adjusted me using the stylus. (Dr Sweat method) I immediately felt relief. Tried the free space fusion card and IMMEDIATELY got the third image. Everything was lined up as it should be. All of my symptoms have disappeared completely!! I can now diverge my eyes. I go back for a follow up appointment this Friday. I will share results of my X-rays this weekend.

                                              The TL;DR is she went to a special kind of chiropractor called Atlas Orthogonal which uses extremely gentle neck adjustments. It is so gentle that some people think it is BS.

                                              It is worth noting that Atlas Orthogonal is often recommended on that FB group for patients in Vision Therapy as it helps them along with it. They also sometimes recommend craniosacral therapy. Perhaps it is all snake oil, but there are many on that FB group with vision issues who have had success.

                                              14 days later

                                              Peter To some people, with physical and perhaps extreme issues, this technique may work. But I am skeptical about the rest of the people who just have increased tension levels in the neck and the rest of the body caused by bad movement habits or other reasons like stage freight. For example actors or musicians complaint a lot of tension in the neck area, some even have partial voice loss because of the muscle stress.

                                              Sorry for not replying for so long, but, you know, the situation in my country...
                                              Abnormal tension in people with bad movement habits is also caused by bad head (neck) balance. As I said above, tension in neck muscles makes whole your body more tensioned and stressed, because it change all the balance in the body and make all the body muscles in extreme tension: you feel uncomfortable just after a little time of work, you want to move your body in some way to decrease the discomfort. So, if your neck balance is perfect, your body is a lot more resistant to bad movement habits and other extreme activities. Let's imagine you did the procedure I'm talking about here, your body can do its job very well, and I can't imagine the amount of sitting in front of the computer that is needed to stress your body that hard that your suboccipital muscles will tense again. These muscles is the point, if they are fine -everything else is fine, if they are not - there is no or very little point of doing something with the rest of the body. Of course, If you did something really extreme just in a few days after the procedure there is a chance, that the nervous system will "block" those muscles again for "safety reasons". But after a certain time after the procedure and in normal condition and with sensible behaviour — No.
                                              If you have any additional questions – always happy to answer

                                                There is a mention of Atlas Orthogonal in this threat. It's a method that looks similar to the method I have mentioned but "looks similar" and that's all. Specialists from that organisation don't really understand what they do, so they only put pressure on the neck with a "stylus". Therefore, they do not "reset the control settings" for the suboccipital muscles (which is the only way to solve the problem), they just temporarily reduce the tension in these muscles. Which can lead these muscles to become even tenser further, than they were before the procedure. There is still a chance, that in your case it would work fine, just because you are lucky, but the chance is not big. Honestly, I don't know how their skills have changed lately, but a few years ago the situation was as I described it.
                                                I recommend Ilyia's Burlakovsky method, Andrey Popravka or Olef Graf.

                                                dev