This week I wanted to talk about neck pain.  This is such a common problem for many people, and can really inhibit your function.

• Around 10% of the adult population at any one time is suffering from a stiff neck
• over 80% of adults are affected by back pain, but neck and shoulder pain are the least tolerated

It’s important to note that neck pain and stiffness can arise from multiple different causes, but pain isn’t always an indicator of a problem for some individuals.

It could be a symptoms in your organs or tissues.

You have 7 Cervical Vertebrae, here are some symptoms from cervical dysfunction.

C5: Problems with your vocal cords, neck glands, such as sore throat, hoarseness, laryngitis?

IT could be from C5 misalignment.

C4: Problems with the neck (C4) may cause runny nose, hearing loss, adenoids or hay fever.

C3: You may be experiencing problems with acne, ezcema or neuritis at this level. If so, it maybe due to the vertebral stiffness, lack of motion or malposition of your spine.

C2: Problems with the 2nd segment of the cervical spine may cause (and are not limited to) sinus problems, allergies, deafness, and faintness.

C1: If you have C1 problems you maybe experiencing headaches, nervousness, insomnia, head colds, high blood pressure, poor metabolism, pituitary hormonal stress imbalances. Dizziness, tiredness, amnesia just to name a few.

Is cervical neck dysfunction the only reason for these conditions? No! You would want to get a functional evaluation to make sure where exactly it is coming from.  However, a lot of these can be helped with just cranial and spinal manipulation!

So, this means that pain is not only the indicator of dysfunction.  Because we are a connected system, it can manifest in other areas.  But back to pain for a second.  The reason it is so important to decrease pain naturally is this:

Crazy huh?  That’s why the old saying, walk it off, is the dumbest (excuse my language) response to any pain or injury.  Pain causes dysfunction, dysfunction causes pain and getting it checked  from myself right away is your best bet at not shrinking your brain!

Take for example, a case study I had this last week.  A patient came in with acute neck pain.  They woke up okay, but after a couple hours were lifting their arms and felt a pull in their neck.  After that, they were unable to actually move their neck more than a couple degrees and were in extreme pain.

Luckily they came in, and after two treatments that day in a span of two hours they walked out about 75% better with almost full range of motion.  Of course, I had to look at multiple different causes, we don’t usually just “wake” up with a sudden pain, it happens from certain things.  But it is pretty amazing to get those results of recovering from a stiff/painful neck injury in a few hours.

That is the testament of looking at things functionally instead of just the ol snap crackle pop, or popping pills.

How did I achieve this success?

Every person is different, but in this particular case, the individual’s neck muscles were shut off because of an internalized stressor.  This made the muscles weak, and most likely that caused them to clench their teeth the evening before which causes dysfunction within the entire body and cranial system.

With the muscles being shut off, even the slight movement of the arm over the head caused the muscle to be injured.

And of course, when you clench, this causes dysfunction in the cranial system and TMJ which causes neck forward posture, that puts pressure on the discs of the neck.

A combination of NET, cranial work, Soft tissue work, cryotherapy and CMRT techniques were used.  I did adjust one level of the cervical spine after the area had calmed down significantly.

So here are some reasons for a pain in the neck:

Red flags should always be ruled out, and imaging is definitely needed in some cases, but most can be helped safely and effectively through wholistic cranial chiropractic care.