You know the old sayings, “it’s a pain in the neck or I have a kink in my neck? Neck pain can make the simplest movements like turning your head to see who's coming when you're driving or just modifying your lifestyle because you just can't turn your neck. Neck pain can also lead to headaches, immobility, muscle weakness and degenerative arthritis over time.
Understanding why you have this pain in your neck is essential to finding the most effective treatment in the shortest amount of time and the optimize your recovery. Neck pain has an annual prevalence rate of over 30% in adults and nearly 50% of these individuals will continue to experience some degree of chronic neck pain or flareups. Among these adults 20 to 70%, will experience neck pain that interferes with their daily activities of life.
While the neck is in a small area of the body, it has many complicated structures that connect the brain to all parts of the body. There are seven neck vertebrae, which are very small, but they allow for a lot of mobility and also can make the neck more prone to injuries, stress and pain.
Some of the causes of neck pain include poor sleeping positions, bad posture, repetitive stress, constant use of technology, trauma such as whiplash, joint issues and muscle strains and sprains.
Many of the issues are caused from either from stress, trauma or poor postural alignment of the spine. When the neck goes into a muscle spasm, this will pull the neck vertebrae out of alignment. This will intern cause a pinching or irritation in the neck nerves. Every nerve in the body starts from the spinal column, when these issues are relating to the neck can have a major impact at all systems, tissues, organs and glands of the body.
Many times, people either ignore their pain in hopes that if they wait long enough, it will simply go away. And there are times that this does happen, but many times these misalignments cause pain to continue to be there. Overtime these spinal joints become continually aggravated which results in the return of pain and flareups. When this misalignment is left uncorrected, this is very similar to a tire being out of alignment in the car. Thus, wearing the tread unevenly as they become more serious and painful in the spine.
Chiropractic has been shown to be very effective in the treatment of neck pain. According to the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics found that patients who had chronic neck pain showed significant pain level improvement following spinal manipulation. In another study from Spine, this Journal found that the majority of users reported that chiropractic helped a great deal with their health problems and improving overall health and well-being.
Chiropractic address is the structural cause of your problem that leads to most of the neck pain and stiffness. After your chiropractic examination and determining the exact source of your problem, a specific treatment plan is developed. Gentle chiropractic adjustments to the spine can bring relief and restore long-term health not only to the neck and your entire body. Please call our team at Sheppard Chiropractic to set up a personal consultation and help try to bring an end to your neck pain.