First let’s talk about why you might have neck pain, and then we’ll discuss ways to find neck pain relief.

 

The most common neck pain causes are:

• Poor posture

• Stress

• Chemical imbalance

• Tension

• Old injury

• Degenerative changes

• Disc Herniation

• Stenosis

• Nerve impingement

• Muscle Spasm

These are a lot of names for conditions, but there are some common principles that help explain virtually all neck pain causes.

The majority of neck pain is caused by inflammation. Even much neuropathic pain (pain that comes from the nerve itself) begins from irritation to the nerve from the chemical components of the inflammatory process.

How can you decrease inflammation and get neck pain relief?

There are 3 main components to getting neck pain relief.

1. Stop hitting yourself

It’s like the neighborhood bully that never leaves you alone, leaving you frazzled at the end of the day. Except, in this case, you really are doing it to yourself.

You need to remove the things in your life that are creating micro-trauma, stress and neck ache on a daily or regular basis.

The biggest culprit here is usually posture.

The average human head weighs 10-12 lbs. This is manageable when the weight is resting on your spine. But for every inch you lean your head forward (tech neck/text neck), the effective weight doubles.

Think of the difference in holding a dumbbell at a 90 degree angle by your side versus holding it out in front of you. The weight gets really heavy, really fast. This is the same with your head. Except it’s not a big, bulky biceps muscle that we’re dealing with. It’s little, postural spinal musculature that’s being asked to do a job that’s too hard.

All you have to do to “stop hitting yourself” is to rest the weight of your head on the support of your spine, and the muscles in your neck and shoulders get to relax and chill out.

Of course, this is easier said than done. It’ll take some work on your part. My job is to convince you that it’s worth it. Nobody can do this for you. Although you may want to check out something like this to help.

Once you’ve addressed your posture, then start to look at the regular activities that might be contributing to your neck ache. Do you always lean on the arm rest in your car when you’re driving? Is there one foot that you always tuck up under you when you’re sitting? Are you watching TV in bed with your back slouched and your neck cranked?

Keep an eye out for the little repetitive things that you do that might be causing neck pain.

They add up. Do you regularly fall asleep while reading? Do you scrunch your shoulders up to your ears when you’re stressed? Do you crack your own neck?

If you train yourself to pay attention to these things, and add easy changes into your daily life, over time, the amount of unnecessary work your neck has to do decreases significantly. This means less stress on your body, which means less inflammation, which means less neck pain.

2. Bring it Back

Now that you’ve stopped the bad behaviors, the next concept is to fix the current dysfunction. You’ve got to bring yourself back to baseline as much as possible.

The joints have been “stuck” so to speak, with dysfunctional movement patterns, ie angry spasming muscles that can’t quite do their jobs. They need to be realigned and brought back into smooth, natural joint movement.

This transfers the stress of movement evenly throughout the body, rather than forcing all the movement through the few joints of yours that are still working properly. (And how long do you think that those superhero joints can keep going with all the extra demand placed on them?)

Foam rolling is an excellent daily addition to maintaining even, balanced movement throughout your body.

Massage is helpful to work through old scar tissue and imbalance, as well as prevent those issues in the future.

3. Shore It Up

The third component is to be as stable as possible, so that when the stressors do come along, you can handle it.

You don’t want to rely on your muscles to hold you up unnecessarily. But you do need them as your strong, balanced support to hold everything in place.

Few things go further toward pain and injury prevention than strong core and good muscle tone. People often ask me what exercise I think they should do. After 20 years in practice, my answer has become: Do the thing that you like best, because it’s the thing you’re most likely to actually do!

Basically, it’s the “Start Somewhere” principle. But if you don’t know where to start, and don’t already have a favorite, yoga is one of the best all-around, checks all the boxes uses, of an hour that I know. And before you say “Yoga is great, but I’m not flexible.”, realize that that’s like saying “Gee, I’d sure like to take a Spanish class, but I don’t speak Spanish.” Yeah, you probably are terrible at yoga right this minute. That’s the point.

If you are local and would like to give it a try, here’s a link to two weeks unlimited at Breathe Yoga studio in Riverton, UT. For a two week unlimited pass, use discount code: Gina

Another easy and fun approach is blood flow restriction training. This wins my prize for the most efficient use of time, because you are building muscle and rehabbing old injuries at the same time. Many neck pain causes resolve naturally with consistent BFR training.

The good news is there’s a lot you can do to find neck pain relief, and most of them aren’t even hard. It just takes a little consistency and a little awareness.

Make an appointment for a chiropractic adjustment with Dr Gina today, and we can decrease your neck pain, and get started on bringing you back into balance.