Relieving Chronic Neck Pain

As I alternated shrugging my shoulders with rocking my head from side to side in hopes of helping to alleviate the royal pain in my neck, I started to wonder just how people choosing to live with chronic neck pain do it. My neck pain is affecting my run, my swim, my Saturday morning walk, I even find myself being a pain in the neck – which is so not me.

Chronic Neck Pain?

Chronic neck pain affects about 30% of the population.  It can be brought on in any number of ways.  Issues such as health, a car accident, sports injury, or even poor posture name a few. Neck pain may even be debilitating. It can make it difficult to look over the shoulder,  produce muscle spasms, tingling in the extremities.  It can make it difficult to stand or sit up straight, affect a good night’s sleep, garner stiffness, and even give help produce headaches.

Where do you start to feel neck pain?

How does neck pain present itself? Depending on what is involved (bones, ligaments, or muscles) neck pain basically starts at the base of the skull.  The pain starts just above the spine and then branches out.  Pain can be sharp, dull, stabbing, throbbing, achy, or a combination of the aforementioned.

Another type of neck pain involves the nerves of the neck (radiculopathy). Radiculopathy pain radiates throughout the upper back and shoulders and may even travel down into the arms and hands. Although this type of nerve pain is not the norm, it may have your therapist reaching out to your physician/surgeon.  This is precautionary, just to ensure everyone involved has you on the correct path to healing and not in need of surgery.

Were can I get help?

Regardless of your neck pain type, you don’t need to live with it. Skilled Move Better PT’s routinely treat, understand, and remediate this type of problem. Because a Move Better PT will learn about you, assess your neck pain level, utilize manual therapy, and instruct you on neck exercises means you get back on the road to recovery, better, faster, and safer.

Life is an adventure, and certainly pain shouldn’t be a part of it. Let us help you with your decision. We want to discover more about you and your chronic neck pain problem, come see us! Learn more about our evidence-based approaches to solving your neck pain.