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Too Much Screen Time Can Make
Computer Users Sick November
05, 2002 06:03 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters
Health) - The more time an office worker toils in front of a computer, the more
likely he or she is to suffer a host of physical, mental and sleep-related ills,
Japanese researchers report.
While video display
terminal (VDT) use has become commonplace in many types of jobs, there is little
information on how long a person can safely use a computer each day. To
investigate, Dr. Tetsuya Nakazawa of Chiba University and colleagues surveyed
over 25,000 office workers who responded to three questionnaires between 1995
and 1997.
Participants
answered questions about the amount of time they spent in front of a VDT, their
sleep habits, and physical and mental ailments including headache, low back
pain, eyestrain, depression and anxiety. Their findings are published in the
October issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. "In our study,
we found a significant relationship between duration of daily VDT use and
physical symptoms," even after adjusting for other factors that could
influence the results, the authors write. Office workers
stuck in front of a computer most commonly complained of headache, eyestrain,
joint pain and stiff shoulders.
Mental symptoms such as lethargy, anxiety and
"reluctance to go to work," as well as sleep-related problems
including insomnia and fatigue, were most common among workers who spent more
than 5 hours a day glued to their computer screen. "This result
suggested that the effect of duration of daily VDT use on these scores has a
threshold effect, and the prevention of mental disorder and sleep disorder
requires the restriction of VDT use to less than 5 hours per day," the
researchers write.
While the type of
computer work the study participants performed varied considerably, as did the
size of the computer used and the work environment, "it should be
emphasized that even under such working conditions, our results were extremely
consistent over a 3-year period," Nakazawa and colleagues note.
The researchers
call for more research into the relationship between computer use and physical,
mental and sleep symptoms.
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