Neck Pain
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 lives! It may have altered your neck’s position; the bones never “got the memo” to return to the correct 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 an X-ray as a straight line or a reversal of the curve. Our specialty is 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
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 listen intently but provide feedback. 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 affects your overall health.
Computerized Posture Analysis
Your neutral standing posture is one of our most essential tools for 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 photographs, we can see where your body is under the most stress from poor posture in seconds. Most people are amazed at what they look like!
Digital X-Rays
We use the most up-to-date technology when taking and analyzing X-rays to know precisely what we are dealing with before we start caring. 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 precisely, 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 average curve values and positions of the bones, and we match your X-rays up to those normals to evaluate the strength of your spine.
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, improving function. We find that improving this alignment with chiropractic adjustments can significantly reduce the frequency and intensity of neck pain.
Common Causes of Neck Pain
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 least resistance path to getting out. This causes neck pain and can sometimes radiate to the shoulder and/or arm. Disc herniation makes 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 faster than usual. 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 prevalent cause of neck pain not only in adults but in kids as well. When 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 complete reversal of the standard 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, or even five times what it usually does!