This is an extremely important topic, one that is becoming an epidemic, that is chronic neck injuries and neck instability in toddlers, children and pre-teens and then teenagers.
This is part of a series of articles and videos. This article is a summary of the video. Please refer to the below article for more in-depth discussion.
Symptoms and misdiagnosis of cervical Instability in children, adolescents, and teenagers
Ligament damage in the neck
A two-year-old has a big head in relationship to their body. A two-year-old who spends most of the day looking down at a tablet will be damaging their neck structure. They will stretch, loosen, or injure their cervical spine ligaments .
An April 2023 paper in the journal Cureus (1) writes: “The pediatric population is particularly vulnerable to the development of text necks due to the increasing use of mobile devices and screens at a young age. Prolonged exposure to poor postural habits in children may result in long-lasting musculoskeletal issues and a higher risk of spine-related disorders later in life .”
These children will develop symptoms of internal jugular vein compression, cerebral spinal fluid blocks, vagus nerve degeneration or vagus nerve injury and ultimately intracranial hypertension. When fluid starts putting pressure on different parts of the brain, such as the motor area of the brain, children can suffer from poor coordination, difficulty with fine motor movements, development of tremors, involuntary movements and seizures. Children can also suffer from blanking out episodes. All this from changes in the bony structure of the neck causing a block in the fluid flow out of the brain.
Forward head posture
Research has suggested that forward head posture is frequently associated with the use of electronic devices and poor posture. Below are the scans of a nine-year-old who had all kinds of symptoms. In the scan you see the nine-year-old lost the natural cervical curve.
The problem this child and other children with similar problems, come from the face down lifestyle of electronics. Many parents wind up in the emergency room because their child has mysterious neurological type symptoms and a history of extensive electronic use and face down lifestyle. Kids can get memory loss of attention, nausea, tremors and blanking out episodes.
Is the child’s problem “functional” structural or is it a psychiatric problem?
Often I would say to parents when you go to a doctor, do they describe your child’s problem as “functional” or do they use the term “psychiatric?” Is it really psychiatric if you have an eight-year-old who is having these scary things happening to him/her? Wouldn’t you be anxious or have problems of anxiety? So when a doctor makes a diagnosis of functional or psychological I would encourage the parents to get their child tested for such things such as ligamentous cervical instability especially if your child has a sudden major personality change get them tested for ligamentous cervical instability.
References
1 Chu EY, Mok TK, Ng GS, Chu EC, Ng G. Pediatric text neck syndrome. Cureus. 2023 Apr 23;15(4). [Google Scholar]