Neck pain is one of the most common conditions in today’s society. It’s also one that we most frequently aggravate from things we do in our daily life! A little background – your neck supports the full weight of your head, which weighs 12 pounds on average. If you’ve ever been bowling, you have an idea of what 12 pounds feels like. It’s not light! If you’re frequently putting your head in a bad position, your neck is likely to suffer. As you can imagine, our technology-based lifestyles may be big contributors to neck pain. Sitting at a computer, using your phone, looking at a tablet or e-reader – they’re all causing your head to go into a downward or forward position (or both), and your neck is taking the brunt of it. Add in poor sleeping positions and it’s just another log on an already burning fire. When the neck starts losing its normal motion, it slowly moves to a bad posture, which can cause degeneration over time. That’s why, if you’ve had an injury to your neck (such as a sports injury or a car accident), it may have altered your neck’s normal position at that time, and the bones never “got the memo” to move back to the right position. This is very common in chronic neck pain patients; the neck should have a “C” curve when looking at it from the side, and it often shows on x-ray as a straight line or a reversal of the curve. The key to solving neck pain is to make sure there is good motion and a proper posture. This is where our specialty lies within chiropractic – restoring your range of motion, building your strength, and addressing your spinal alignment to make it as neutral as possible for the long-term.
How We Treat Neck Pain in Ramsey, NJ
When it comes to neck pain, it’s important to find the root cause, not just the daily aggravators. Our protocol consists of:
Comprehensive Consultation and Exam
We’re going to sit down with you to dig into your history, as many clues come from that discussion. It’s a two-way conversation, as we’re listening intently but providing feedback along the way. During the exam portion, we’ll check things like your neck’s range of motion and upper body muscle strength and perform several orthopedic and neurological tests to see where you are compared to normal. This helps us identify exactly how your neck pain is affecting your overall health.
Computerized Posture Analysis
Your neutral standing posture is one of our most important tools to analyzing where your neck pain is coming from. We take pictures of you from front and side, and by placing digital reference points on your pictures we can see in seconds where your body is under the most stress from poor posture. Most people are amazed as to what they really look like!
Digital X-Rays
We use the most up-to-date technology both when taking and analyzing x-rays to know exactly what we are dealing with before we start care. There are three main things we are looking for in your neck x-rays: degeneration, disc spacing, and how far your alignment is from normal alignment. In the head and neck specifically, we measure how far forward your head is away from your shoulders (known as forward head posture “FHP” or anterior head translation “AHT”), and the amount of curve (or lack of) in the bones when looking at you from the side. We know the normal curve values and positions of the bones, and we match your x-rays up to those normals to evaluate the strength of your spine.
Once we have evaluated all of the information, we then choose from several therapies, depending upon your condition:
Specific Chiropractic Adjustments
At its core, the spine wants to be neutral. When bones are out of their normal position (sometimes one in a section of your spine, sometimes several), the result is a gradually weakening posture and pressure on the nerves between the bones. By reducing the misalignments in those areas, the spine gets more freedom of motion, allowing function to improve. We find that improving this alignment with chiropractic adjustments can be significant in reducing the frequency and intensity of neck pain.
Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan
Trying to recover from neck pain can’t fully occur if there is muscle weakness or imbalance. If your muscles have been fighting a bad posture for many years (maybe even exaggerated by long hours at a computer), getting them strong is a priority. We often find people with neck pain present with limited range of motion in the neck. Therefore, we start by increasing flexibility. Once your range has improved, we then can focus on building your strength. It takes consistency, so we give you a customized exercise plan for both in-office and at home to make sure you’re able to keep aggravating episodes to a minimum, both in frequency and intensity.
Cervical Spinal Decompression
There are occasions where neck pain may be caused by a bulging or herniated disc in your neck, putting direct pressure on highly sensitive nerves. In these cases, spinal decompression is a highly effective therapy which gently pulls your head up away from your shoulders. This allows the muscles in your neck to relax while relieving the disc pressure on your nerves. As with exercise, consistency of decompression is important to change muscle patterns that have been set in for a long time. But the results, in conjunction with spinal adjustments and your customized exercises, can be significant.
Electrical Muscle Stimulation
In the initial stages of care, we are looking to reduce muscle spasm and tension in the neck and shoulders. Electrical muscle stimulation is used to accelerate that process, allowing you to feel better and alleviate the neck stiffness often associated with neck pain. Most people say e-stim feels like a light massage and often comment how much looser they feel when it’s done.
Posture Rehabilitation
If your neck pain improves but your posture is still poor, the likelihood of having relapses is high. Putting in a plan to create and stabilize good, strong posture is your key to having the longest-lasting results. We’ll utilize various forms of therapy to put your posture in the “mirror image” – essentially, the exact opposite posture that you currently have. (Let’s face it – that posture isn’t helping you, or you wouldn’t have neck pain!)
By performing mirror image exercises and traction, your body will gradually learn what “correct” posture is. Each time in-office and at home that your body goes into the mirror image, it’s another signal to the brain, your bones and your muscles to dump the old, bad patterns and create new, stronger patterns. This may be the most overlooked aspect of neck pain; there’s no way a weak posture can help you get better.
Acupuncture
Acupuncture can help remove negative energy and restore positive energy throughout your body. By focusing on specific points and zone in your body, endorphins (the “feel-good” hormones) get released, and that triggers a positive response throughout the body. Acupuncture has been used for both acute and chronic neck pain and can be very beneficial, either on its own or in conjunction with chiropractic and postural rehabilitation.
Supplements and Other At-Home Remedies
Depending on the cause of your neck pain, certain nutritional supplements may be worthwhile. However, each case is different, which means your nutritional recommendations may be quite different than someone else you know with neck pain. We’ll often recommend certain topical gels or ointments to relieve muscle tension and reduce pain. Some of our recommendations can even be purchased in your local grocery store or health food store.
Lifestyle Changes
Given that we’re working for 8-10 hours a day and sleeping 6-8 hours, whatever posture you’re in had better be right for that amount of time! It’s important that you know how to sleep and how to sit at your computer, and just as important knowing what not to do. Sometimes simple shifts make the biggest differences, and that’s especially true when it comes to your daily habits. We’ll make sure you know what those shifts are to avoid injury and get the best results in our office.
Common Causes of Neck Pain
Neck pain come in many different styles. Remember, neck pain is common, but not normal. Here’s a few of the ones we see most frequently:
Disc Problems
Discs are like shock absorbers between the bones of the neck. Think of them like jelly donuts, with a thick outside (“annulus”) and a soft, gel-like inside (“nucleus”). Discs wear down and dehydrate over time and frequently cause two stages of problems – bulging discs and herniated discs. In a bulging disc, the thick outer fibers begin to tear, and the soft gel inside takes the path of least resistance to get out. This causes neck pain and can sometimes radiate to the shoulder and/or arm. With a disc herniation, the outer fibers tear more and the “nucleus” breaks through the outermost fibers. This frequently causes more shoulder and arm pain and more intense neck pain. Surgery may be necessary if it doesn’t improve, which is why it’s so important to fix it early.
Degenerative Disc Disease
This is an age-related condition where the discs break down at a faster rate than normal. Certain factors speed this process up, such as obesity, smoking, and work that is physically hard on the spine. When the disc starts to get thinner, the hole where the nerve exits the bones above and below gets smaller, causing that sensitive nerve to reduce how well it works. Depending on what areas are affected, it can have significant affects on not only range of motion but overall health. Unfortunately, this process can’t be reversed, but it can be slowed with increased motion and restoration of good posture.
“Tech Neck”
This is quickly becoming a highly common cause of neck pain not only in adults, but in kids as well. With the amount of time we look forward (at our computer) or down (at our phones or tablets), the neck muscles get overworked and weak from trying to pull the head into a better position. This ultimately creates a lack of proper curve in the neck, causing a straight neck or sometimes even a full reversal of the normal shape. The forward head posture we carry as a result actually increases the stress on the neck by making it feel like our head weighs three, four, even five times what it normally does!
Whiplash
Whiplash frequently occurs after car accidents or other injuries and gets worse with moving the neck. A whiplash injury can cause a near-instant straightening of the bones of the neck, losing the natural curvature, and if it’s not addressed it can lead to long-term, chronic neck issues. Whiplash can cause issues beyond pain, such as blurred vision, difficulty sleeping and memory issues.
Spinal Misalignment
When the bones of the neck are misaligned, it results in pressure on the nerves of the spine. This can be caused by poor posture with sitting, sleeping or standing, and can even create additional issues such as weakness or numbness and tingling in the arms and hands. You can likely spot some aspects of your poor posture in a mirror, but identifying spinal misalignment can be subtle and difficult to detect on your own. A combination of specific chiropractic adjustments, exercise and lifestyle change are just some of the ways to help recover and restore poor posture.
Frequently Asked Questions About Neck Pain
When should you see a chiropractor for neck pain?
There’s no wrong time to see a chiropractor for neck pain. Whether it has been going on for a short time or chronically for years, an evaluation of your spine and overall posture will benefit at any point.
Is a massage or chiropractic better for neck pain?
Massage will typically be helpful in the acute stage of neck pain. Chiropractic can be very effective for both acute neck pain and finding the underlying causes of chronic neck pain as well.
Is it ok to pop my own neck?
Cracking or popping the joints is normal. It becomes a problem if it hurts when you do it or if you have to force it, as that can irritate the nerves of the neck and cause significant pain and restriction of motion.
Can poor posture cause neck pain?
When the head is too far in front of the shoulders, it strains the neck and upper back. Neck pain from poor posture comes from the neck muscles being overworked trying to get the head and neck to a more neutral position.
How should I sleep with neck pain?
Before going to sleep, use moist heat on the shoulders and neck for 15-20 minutes, followed by slow neck range of motion stretches. Your sleep position should be as neutral as possible, avoiding rotating or tilting the head and neck.
