Free tool
How heavy is your head right now?
Your head weighs about 5 kg. Tilt it forward and the calculated load on your cervical spine, the part of your spine in your neck, rises far above that. Drag the slider to your usual posture at the desk or on your phone.
Roughly the weight of a 4-year-old.
That's 4 hours a day with 13 kg more load on your neck's spine than when you sit upright. Over a working month that's about 86 hours.
Where the numbers come from
Spine surgeon Kenneth Hansraj modelled the load on the cervical spine at different head angles: about 5 kg upright, 12 kg at 15°, 18 kg at 30°, 22 kg at 45° and 27 kg at 60°. Values between those angles are interpolated. It's a model, not a measurement of your neck, but it shows why a small slouch held for hours adds up.
How to find your angle
Ask someone to take a photo of you from the side while you work, or prop your phone on a shelf and use the timer. Draw a line from your shoulder to your ear: the angle between that line and vertical is your tilt. Most people at a laptop sit between 15° and 30°; looking down at a phone is often 45° or more.
What helps
Raise the screen to eye level, bring it to arm's length, and notice when you creep forward. That last part is the hard one, because nobody notices their own slouch. Upsaro watches your distance to the screen through your webcam and nudges you the moment you lean in. Everything runs on your computer.
Let your webcam do the noticing.
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Hansraj KK. Assessment of stresses in the cervical spine caused by posture and position of the head. Surg Technol Int. 2014;25:277–9. This calculator is for information only and is not medical advice.