Neck Pain

The neck. The space between your shoulders and your head is an impressively complicated area, with cervical vertabrae, intervertebral discs, glands, nerves, lymphatic vessels, and cardiovascular structures, not to mention your spinal cord. That large, heavy orb (your skull) resting on top of the relatively small, spindly cervical spine, presents real challenges to keeping your neck healthy and pain free.

The neck is particularly vulnerable to sports injuries because of the structure of the cervical spine, the weight of the skull, and the radical and abrupt increase in range of motion between the shoulders and the neck (C-6/C7).

Common sources of neck problems include:

1. Sitting postures (for example, your work station/computer, and your overly cushy sofa at home)
2. Stress (mental and emotional) induced pain and dysfunction
3. Injuries
4. Sleeping positions - this involves figuring out the right relationship between the width of your shoulders, your mattress and your pillow, in addition to how you situate your body in the bed.

The holistic clinical massage specialists at Neuromuscular Works can help you figure out the likely cause of your non-traumatic neck pain, and help you recover from neck injuries, too. If you've been involved in an automobile accident or suffer from chronic muscular soreness in your neck, you should consider a consultation with a Neuromuscular Massage Therapist, and see what medical clinical massage therapy can do to relieve your pain.

Some of the most common injuries/dysfunctions of the cervical spine are:

Tightness, pain, postural distortions, and loss of range of motion from an abnormal cervical curve: Negative changes to the cervical curve are becoming increasingly common due to the increased number of hours spent at computers when proper sitting postures (and other work-station factors) have not been established. Children during their growth years are literally overburdened with unreasonably heavy book bags which put undue stress on their upper-back, shoulders and neck. Computer use by teenagers (i.e., during their growth years) is a potentially disastrous trend, because if improper sitting postures are sustained over enough time, then the actual "shaping" or growth of the vertebral discs can be negatively affected; thoracic vertebrae fail to grow into an appropriately rectangular shaped structure, and instead mature in a wedged shape creating a slumping or “humped” mid and upper back.

Whiplash: This describes a situation where the head is accelerated first into hyperextension (thrown backwards) and then, very quickly, thrown forward. The most common occurrence of whiplash is associated with car accidents, but it’s easy to see the same mechanism in many sports accidents as well. More commonly, there is an”external contact” that initiates the first movement outside the normal range of motion, but the same scenario can occur with a “simple” fall to the ground. Whiplash can be mild or very severe, and can involve pain, headache, tingling down into the arms, ringing in the ears, difficulty concentrating or remembering, stiffness, weakness, or dizziness. Associated shoulder and upper back pain is common. Whiplash dysfunctions usually heal within a few weeks, but if the level of disruption to muscle/tendon/ligament or joints is sufficient, then the condition can become chronic and lead to quite severe problems down the road, including TMJD (Temporo-mandibular Joint Dysfunction.) If whiplash symptoms do not subside after home therapy, i.e., RICE (rest, ice, compression and elevation) and appropriate Neuromuscular Therapy treatments, then seek further diagnostic help from your physician.

Neck Sprains: This condition occurs with whiplash, and sports injuries as well. Falls, or contact trauma are generally involved. A sprain describes the stretching or tearing of ligaments that result from the boney structures being taken beyond their maximal range of motion. Sprains may not be noticed immediately, but can show up over the next day or two after the incident. Symptoms are very similar to whiplash, and RICE (rest, ice, compression and elevation) is usually suggested for mild to moderate cases, along with appropriate applied Neuromuscular Therapy.

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