The laptop does not belong on your laps

We spent most of our waking time in front of the screen performing professional tasks, studying, playing games, or scrolling through social media.

While in the office you place your laptop on a desk, in the field, or at home, you may find yourself using your laps as a desk. Is this really safe?

You may have already noticed the discomfort from the machine while it’s on the laps. Beyond the discomfort, placing the laptop on your lap has far-reaching effects on your health and wellbeing.

The heat is not good for sperm production

The external male reproductive organs are dangling away from the rest of the body for a reason – to keep them cool. Spermatogenesis, the process of sperm production, is optimum at cool temperatures. If your own body’s temperature is not ideal for sperm production, hence the dangling, how much worse is the heat from the laptop?

Placing the laptop on the laps can raise the temperature on your scrotal area by around two degrees Celsius. That’s for new laptops with fully-functional cooling systems. Those whose fans and other cooling mechanisms are faulty may cause a much higher increase in temperature.

If your testes are exposed to the heat for just a few minutes, they may not be affected severely. But how many people use laptops for just a few minutes?

The extended exposure can lead to the production of sperms of low quality and quantity. This can lead to infertility or difficulty getting your partner pregnant.

Neither is the radiation

The effect of radiation from telecommunication devices on your health may sound like a crazy conspiracy theory and you don’t want to sound like the “uneducated people” who claimed the 5G network is the cause of COVID-19.

Unfortunately, radiation from your laptop, and even your smartphone, has real effects on your health. The effect on male fertility is direct and has been proven. A study by the Fertility and Sterility organisation showed that being exposed to a laptop connected to Wi-Fi lowers your sperm motility. Sperms with low motility cannot swim to the ovum and fertilise it. And this damage is observed after less than five hours of exposure.

A more recent study confirmed this and asserted that the damage may be even worse than earlier reported, with a significant number of sperms dying from the radiation.

You can’t totally avoid Wi-Fi in the modern world. But placing the laptop on the lap is will worsen the effects on your reproductive system.

Bad posture and injuries of the neck and back

Injuries related to computer usage have become common, mainly caused by bad sitting posture. Ideally, the laptop should be at the level of your eyes and head. If the screen and keyboard are either too high or too low, you strain your body. Although the hands, legs, and other body parts feel some of the strain, the back and neck are the greatest victims.

When the laptop is on the laps, the screen and keyboard are too low, forcing you to slouch. This causes a lot of strain on the neck and shoulder blades and the pain may go away when you sleep. However, over a period of time, the damage extends to your backbone, affecting the lower back and the backbone disks.

These injuries in turn affect your ability to stand upright, sit, or even lie down in your normal positions. If not addressed promptly, the damage to your health can be permanent.

Skin burns and possible permanent skin conditions

The heat from the laptop is not only bad for your genitals.  If you make a habit of placing it on the lap, the heat will cook your skin tissue. Within a few months, you will notice dark spots developing where the hottest part of the laptop touches your skin.

By this time, you can imagine the damage that the heat has caused to your blood vessels, blood, and other tissues in the area.

Scientists report that there is currently no proof that skin damage can develop into skin cancer. However, even without the risk of cancer, the damage to the skin can lead to permanent scarring, wounds, or other skin conditions.