Did you know that your neck supports the weight and movement of your head – quite a job, since an adult’s head can weigh between ten and fourteen pounds! It also contains the majority of nerves that reach from your brain to the rest of your body, like a pipe full of fiber-optic cables.
Muscles around the neck are often tight on most people these days. Why is that? With the amount of driving, computer work, and TV watching that most of us do, it is not surprising that many people suffer from neck pain. However, the one activity we are all guilty of is continually looking at our mobile phones, anywhere and everywhere!
The constant looking down at the screen puts the muscles under strain and can over time develop to trigger points. These myofascial trigger points can stimulate pain that spreads from your neck to nearby parts of the body, such as the head and shoulders. Previous patients have told me it can feel like it is over the eye or behind the ear. If you press the tender spot on the neck, this can often reproduce headaches. Muscle pain and trigger points can be a common cause for tension headaches, that most of the population can at some point suffer from.
Did you know that the further away from your body you hold something, the heavier it feels? Neck pain may often be caused by the long-term effect of bad posture, especially when you regularly hold a weight too far from your body. This might be due to the weight of your head, as you slouch over a desk, lifting young children, or even just by carrying items back and forth from your car. The result is a loss of proper movement in the joints, and a strain on the muscles in your neck, which may lead to pain and stiffness, although it may take days, weeks, or even months to develop.
What can the chiropractor do for you?
As a chiropractor, we will look at the whole system for physical, chemical and emotional stresses. In the case of neck pain, our muscles attach to bones and the bones make up the structure and foundation for the muscles to attach to, so if the structure is not right then the muscles won’t be right either! Simple! As chiropractors, it doesn’t really matter because we can treat both muscles and the structure. A combination of chiropractic manipulation, massage, and a number of other techniques will help restore normal movement to your neck and so reduce the pain, and subsequently reduce the number of headaches!
By seeing a chiropractor at Back2normal, we will help you discover the reasons why headaches are part of your day-to-day life, and using our Sherlock Holmes type investigation, we can find what triggers yours. Call or book an appointment today with Jonas to get started on your journey to relieve your suffering!