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                  Too much screen time can make you sick                           [advertisement]      
[       ] [GO]                                                                     [1]                  
                  *                   [story]                                                           
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  World            ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━                                                          
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  CNN/Money                                                                                             
  Sports at       NEW YORK (Reuters) -- The more time an office worker toils in    *                    
  SI.com          front of a computer, the more likely he or she is to suffer a    Click Here           
  Politics        host of physical, mental and sleep-related ills, Japanese                             
  Law             researchers report.                                                                   
  Technology                                                                                            
  Science &       While video display terminal (VDT) use has become commonplace in                      
  Space           many types of jobs, there is little information on how long a                         
  Health          person can safely use a computer each day. To investigate, Dr.                        
  Entertainment   Tetsuya Nakazawa of Chiba University and colleagues surveyed                          
  Travel          over 25,000 office workers who responded to three questionnaires                      
  Education       between 1995 and 1997.                                                                
  Special                                                                                               
  Reports         Participants answered questions about the amount of time they                         
  Click Here      spent in front of a VDT, their sleep habits, and physical and                         
SERVICES          mental ailments including headache, low back pain, eyestrain,                         
  Video           depression and anxiety. Their findings are published in the                           
  Newswatch       October issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.                         
  E-Mail                                                                                                
  Services        "In our study, we found a significant relationship between                            
  CNN To Go       duration of daily VDT use and physical symptoms," even after                          
SEARCH CNN.COM:   adjusting for other factors that could influence the results,                         
                  the authors write.                                                                    
[       ] [GO]                                                                                          
                  'Reluctance to go to work'                                                            
                                                                                                        
                  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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                  Copyright 2002 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may                        
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