Seeing a chiropractor can provide great relief for neck pain, with many potential treatments that are helpful. Treatments can include chiropractic neck adjustments, rehabilitative exercises, home stretches, soft tissue therapies, and others. Doctors of chiropractic are well-known to be highly trained to diagnose the causes of your neck pain, and provide effective hands-on treatment. Chiropractors use manual therapies such as adjustments and mobilizations to not only relieve neck pain, but fix the source of the problem. Chiropractors make sure the neck joints, soft tissues and nerves are working as they should be.
The neck (known as the “cervical spine”) is an area full of moving parts, making neck pain a common problem with many potential causes. The many joints of the neck allow for a large range of motion, and many nerves in the region provide lots of sensory information. The neck can be particularly susceptible to injury. The average adult head is about 15 pounds, sitting on a flexible and mobile neck with limited muscular stability. Often, we don’t realize how much we use and move our necks until we are unable to do so. Due to the complexity of the neck, when something goes wrong it can be painful and incapacitating. There are many nerves that exit from the neck region, which send large bundles of nerves down the arms and upper back and into the head. This means that problems in your neck can result in pain elsewhere, such as symptoms down the arms like tingling, “pins and needles,” aching, or sharp pain with movements.
The neck, shoulder, and upper back segments are intricately related, and all three must be addressed. Also, headaches can result from dysfunction in the neck sending pain to the head (called “cervicogenic” headaches), with muscle attachments from a group of muscles called the “suboccipitals”.
The Causes of Neck Pain:
Neck pain is usually caused by a combination of factors, including poor posture, chronic muscle strain, stress, “tweaking the neck” with odd sleeping positions, disc problems, and muscular weakness to name a few. One of the most common injuries to the neck is whiplash, caused by a sudden head movement which damages the joints and supportive soft tissues in the neck. Symptoms of whiplash are often delayed, taking days or weeks to become noticeable. Often people don’t seek treatment after a sports injury or car accident because there is no pain right away. If you’ve been in an accident but have no pain, don’t assume that you have not sustained an injury. Visit chiropractor Dr. Ben Tucker and make sure your neck is functioning normally.
