Neck conditions can be extremely painful, and effect most aspects of your daily life, from simple things like turning your head, lying in bed, or working on your computer, to more stressful physical activity like exercising. This article will help you understand what may have caused the pain, how to diagnose the problem, as well as your treatment options and how to get neck pain relief.
What Causes Neck Pain
There are the obvious traumatic causes of neck pain like motor vehicle accidents and falls which cause a violent flicking of your head, leading to an acceleration / deceleration injury which often bends your spine into an abnormal position. This spinal trauma creates spinal joint inflammation and muscle spasm, and sometimes intervertebral disc compression can lead to a bulging disc (slipped disc) which gives you neurological symptoms like pain, burning, numbness or weakness down the arms/hands. Whiplash is the term which describes this type of neck injury and the resulting pain and stiffness, and is one of the main conditions treated by a Chiropractor.
By far the most common cause of neck pain visits to a Chiropractor is from the stress and strain of daily life. The factors leading to this type of pain mainly include the following:
- Sleeping in the wrong position: The extreme neck rotation from lying on your stomach tends to cause the most trouble.
- Using the incorrect type of pillow: Feather, buckweat, husks, or ordinary foam doesnât provide the correct neck support during a full nightâs sleep.
- Excessive use of technology/reading: Forward bending (flexion) of your neck for hours each day to look down at laptops, cell phones, tablets or books is literally bending your spine in the opposite direction to how the cervical (neck) portion of your spine is naturally bent. Over time, the spine can lose its natural curved shape, a condition know as Loss of the Cervical Lordosis (Curvature).
- Rigorous exercise: Poorly performed exercises (bad form), excessive amount of resistance/weight being used, or prolonged exercise duration can push your body past its natural limits, causing neck tissues to fail and become painful.
There is a common misconception that every ache or pain in the body is muscular in origin. This couldnât be further from the truth. The soft tissues could definitley be involved in your problem (muscles, tendons or ligaments), but there are other tissues in the neck which could easily be the source of your pain, like the cervical spinal joints, intevertebral discs and spinal nerves.
As a general rule of thumb, soft tissue problems in the neck cause short term pain, hours to days. When a problem has been going on for weeks, months or years itâs generaly spinal in origin. Quite simply, muscles donât usually cause pain for prolonged periods of time, but spinal problems nearly always do. Muscular neck problems donât directly cause internal cervical spinal problems, but if you have a spinal problem you will almost certainly have an associalted muscle spasm, your bodyâs natural muscular response to the spinal condition.
When neck pain has been around for weeks or longer, be sure to to shift your focus away from the muscles and get your spine assessed by a Chiropractor or Neurosurgeon, the spinal focussed practitioners.
How To Diagnose Neck Pain
There are 4 pillars to making the correct neck pain diagnosis:
- A Thorough Patient History: having an in depth discussion with a health care practitioner is the first step in understanding which neck tissues are involved in your problem. As mentioned in the âcausesâ section above, there are many potential tissues involved in neck pain, but based on a simple conversation, your practitioner can already get an idea of the problem based on how the pain started, how long youâve had the pain, the type of pain sensation you are feeling, and any associated problems like Headaches, Upper Back Pain, and Neurological symptoms down the arms/hands.
- A Physical Examination: your neck is a moving structure and specific movement / orthopedic tests need to be performed in order to see how the different tissues function under movement stress. Discomfort during certain tests helps the practitioner understand which tissues are injured, either the soft tissues and/or the spinal structures. Muscle spasm / knots / triggerpoints can be felt with the practitioners hands, and joint stiffness and inflammation can be elicited through cervical facet (joint) tests.
- X-Ray Scan: when a patient history and physical examination does not help the practitioner to make an initial diagnosis, or if the results donât add up, especially when the spine is the cause of your problem, visualizing the tissues internally is required. The bony structure of the spine is investigated through an X-ray, which can help diagnose joint degeneration (Osteoarthritis), fractures, dislocations, vertebral instability, and structural abnormalities like vertebral misalignments and loss of the cervical curvature (lordosis).
- MRI Scan: when a X-ray of the bony neck structure fails to bring you closer to the diagnosis, an MRI is the best way to understand the health of your other spinal tissues, namely the intervertrebral discs and spinal nerves. Conditions like disc bulges (slipped disc), disc ruptures, and the extent of the pressure on your spinal nerves (pinched nerve) are well visualized on a MRI scan.
There are lots of different soft tissue (muscle) practitioners in health care, but not many spinal focused practitioners. If your muscular diagnosis is not responding well to treatment, or If your diagnosis is uncertain and needs an X-ray or MRI scan to further understand your neck pain, make sure you get help from a Chiropractor and/or Neurosurgeon.
Neck Pain Treatment in Umhlanga
The treatment you receive for your neck pain should be 100% dependant on the diagnosis that was made. There are many treatments worldwide for neck pain, but the procedures mentioned below are the most used, have the highest success rate, and are backed by the most science.
Neck muscle pain responds well to the following soft tissue treatments:
- Massage: digging into and rubbing your hands over tight muscles is a great way to iron out the spasm and knots.
- Stretching: tight soft tissues are loosened when they are lengthened.
- Heat: increases blood flow to the area, and the warmth has a relaxing effect on tight muscles.
- Dry Needling: putting a needle into stubborn knots / triggerpoints helps break down the stubborn knot and loosen the muscle that other soft tissue teckniques failed to achieve.
- Electrotherapy (T.E.N.S / Interferential): blocks pain signals, therefore reducing your perception of the pain.
- Ultrasound: aids the healing of damaged / torn soft tissies, as well as reducing the swelling in the area.
- Exercise: strengthening the soft tissues around the problem area helps provide a layer of protection from future bouts of similar neck pain.
Spinal neck pain responds well to the following treatments:
- Electrotherapy (T.E.N.S / Interferential): blocks pain signals, therefore reducing your perception of the pain.
- Heat: increases blood flow to the area, and the warmth has a relaxing effect on tight muscles and helps loosen stiff joints.
- Cervical Facet Joint Mobilization: gently moving your spinal joints through their natural range of motion, in order to restore the normal fuction and motion to the problematic joint.
- Cervical Traction: helps reduce pressure on any bulging intervertebral discs, which in turn reduces pressure on your nerves. This reduces the symptoms down the arms/hands from a pinched nerve in the neck.
- Cervical Manipulation: most effective way to restore misaligned vertebral bones back to their normal position, and restores the movement back to a âseized upâ / tight / stiff joint that has lost its ability to move naturally. (see Manipulation video)
- Cervical Curvature Restoration: a specialized home based exercise and stretching protocol to reduce upper back and neck pain, correct bad posture and restore the normal spinal curvature (lordosis)
As mentioned in the diagnosis section above, due to the nature of spinal conditions almost always causing soft tissue spasm around the problem area, spinal focussed practitioners will often perform one or more of the above mentioned soft tissue procedures in conjunction with the cervical spinal treatment. However, if the spinal problem is successfully treated, the body would have no need to hold those surrounding muscles in spasm, and the soft tissues will almost always settle down on their own, without any direct treatment.