How Chiropractors Treated A Neck Pain?
The ‘severe’ headaches of the first few days and the acute neck pain have subsided and can come on suddenly and prevent you from managing your normal daily activities
Neck Pain is a Real Pain in the Neck
Neck pain is, well, a real pain in the neck! Discomfort, soreness and stiffness can make it hard to turn your head and difficult to get comfortable while doing almost anything. You may develop headaches as a result. Pain in the neck is often combined with shoulder pain, jaw pain or back pain. Even minor neck pain can affect your quality of life – but neck pain relief is available… and it doesn’t come from a bottle! Read on to find out more.
There are just seven bones in your neck (the cervical spine), and they are some of the most overworked bones in the body. Imagine lugging around a bowling ball all day – you’d be exhausted, even if you were able to switch the ball from arm to arm or carry it in a backpack or sling. Now imagine balancing that ball on your fingertips, and you have some idea of what your neck has to contend with in carrying your head, which weighs about 12 pounds (5.5 kg). Other factors that contribute to neck pain include:
- Hunching over your desk or workbench all day
- Clenching the steering wheel
- Emotional stress, which can cause unconscious tightening of the neck muscles
- Disc degeneration
- Injuries. See more here.
Neck Pain and Chiropractic
Our neck, also called the cervical spine, begins at the base of the skull and contains seven small vertebrae. Incredibly, the cervical spine supports the full weight of your head, which is on average about 12 pounds. While the cervical spine can move your head in nearly every direction, this flexibility makes the neck very susceptible to pain and injury.
The neck’s susceptibility to injury is due in part to biomechanics. Activities and events that affect cervical biomechanics include extended sitting, repetitive movement, accidents, falls and blows to the body or head, normal aging, and everyday wear and tear. Neck pain can be very bothersome, and it can have a variety of causes.
Here are some of the most typical causes of neck pain:
- Injury and Accidents: A sudden forced movement of the head or neck in any direction and the resulting “rebound” in the opposite direction is known as whiplash. The sudden “whipping” motion injures the surrounding and supporting tissues of the neck and head. Muscles react by tightening and contracting, creating muscle fatigue, which can result in pain and stiffness. Check more here.
Most neck pains are easily managed and patients can expect significant improvement within a few days and a week is usually sufficient to complete treatment.
Gentle Chiropractic Techniques for Neck Pain
If the patient cannot relax, or simply dislikes the cavitation/cracking feeling or sound or any type of concerns, a gentle form of chiropractic adjustment may be utilized rather than the more traditional techniques. Some of these methods include a slower (low-velocity) technique performed within the passive range of joint motion.
Common Gentle Chiropractic Techniques
Examples of commonly employed gentle chiropractic techniques include (but are not limited to):
- Cervical mobilization: The patient is usually lying on his or her back and is relaxed while the chiropractor manually moves the vertebra in the neck left to right, and vice versa, alternating between the side to side motion and a figure 8 movement, applied at varying degrees of moving the head forward, backward, and to the side and in rotation.
- Cervical manual traction: The patient is usually lying face up or sitting, or less commonly prone (lying face down, on the stomach). The chiropractor gently pulls on the neck, stretching the cervical spine often varying the angle between flexion (forward) and extension (backward), based on comfort and searching for the correct angle to most efficiently reduce the tightness. Read full article here.
Preventing A Neck Pain
Related Articles:
Treating Whiplash
Neck Whiplash Treatment
