A Chinese teenager suffered the fright of his life when he woke up one day with no feeling in his body due to a habit that is becoming more and more common.
Like many youths his age, Xiao Dong, a 19-year-old third-year student at a university in Quanzhou, China’s Fujian province, spent a lot of time looking down at his phone, but this summer, the consequences of his daily habit became life-threatening. After getting a summer job washing dishes and wiping tables with his head bent forward for hours on end, the pressure on the blood vessels near his spine became too much, as he also spent most of his free time looking down at his phone, playing video games and browsing on social media platforms. At first, he started experiencing numbness in his neck, arms, and legs, but on July 30, he woke up with no feeling at all in his legs and could not move.
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Xiao was taken to the emergency room, where doctors discovered a large blood clot in the cervical spine at the C4-T1 segment, compressing the spinal cord and causing his body from the chest down to be almost completely paralyzed. Doctors told him that the constant bowing of the head for long periods of time ruptured an abnormal blood vessel in the spinal canal, forming a hematoma and causing acute paralysis.
Luckily for the young man, doctors performed emergency surgery to remove the blood clot and prevent permanent paralysis. Xiao Dong is currently regaining control of his lower limbs, but he is expected to make a full recovery.
Medical experts warn that bowing your head for a long time will cause blood circulation to stagnate, which in turn causes veins to swell and dilate abnormally. When blood is not drained effectively, it will lead to symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, prolonged fatigue, accompanied by a feeling of numbness in the shoulders, neck, and arms. In extreme cases, chronic congestion can affect the structure of blood vessels and the central nervous system, with severe consequences like cerebral infarction or hemiplegia.
