Neck Pain?
Why doesn't Dracula have many friends?
-It turns out he's a real pain in the neck!~
Ok, all jokes aside neck pain is no laughing matter!
Let's set the scene. There you are, minding your own business driving, showering, watching TV, working, or my personal least favorite, sleeping and out of nowhere, in the most anticlimactic way possible, your neck stiffens up and begins to really hurt. Did you shower too hard? Maybe you slept a bit too recklessly. I bet much like playing sports, you just can't watch TV like you used to!
Of course that's not what happened.
Leaving out whiplash or a traumatic neck injury, most neck pain is a result of poor structure and chronic improper posture. Whatever you were doing at the time just so happened to be "The straw that broke the camels back.". We'll go over that in a bit, but first here are some statistics on neck pain.
-Depending on the country, between 16% to 75% of the population experiences neck pain.
-Neck pain ranks in the top 5 disorders in the United States.
-Osteoarthritis may be present in up to half of all neck pain cases in individuals over 50.
When it comes to structural issues of the neck, pain takes the center stage quite easily. That's because it HURTS! It is recognizable and honestly when it's there, it's difficult to think of anything else. But, not including a traumatic injury, have you ever really thought about WHY it hurts?
Most commonly, by the time pain shows up, some significant structural issues have occurred. Let's use an analogy. The structure and function of your vehicles wheel system is pretty darn important right?
If the wheels lost function and failed to spin I bet you would notice right away! This is very similar to a traumatic injury of the neck. Something happened that drastically altered the structure causing function to cease. This is fast, usually comes out of nowhere, and is very noticeable!
Now let's look at something a bit less exciting, but definitely just as important.
Poor alignment is usually quite boring and honestly pretty unnoticeable. For the most part, by the time you know there is an issue: your car pulls to one side, starts to shimmy, or you start to hear a weird noise while driving down the road, the damage is done and the tire is shot!
This is a perfect analogy for a slowly progressing structural issue. Most of the time that neck problem that "just came out of nowhere" has been slowly getting worse over the span of YEARS!
How do you know if your tires are out of alignment?
That's easy! You bring your car to a professional who utilizes a system of objective measurements to identify the issues in your vehicles alignment and then uses that information to correct it!
Ok ok, so how do we know when our spine is out of alignment?
It's actually very similar to the analogy above.
In our office we utilize a system of objective examination procedures to not only identify the issues within your spine, but also to get a good idea of how long the problems have been present and how long it may take to correct!
A system of measuring temperature changes along the spine, measuring the spinal muscle tone, monitoring the variability of the heart rate and correlating these exam findings to spinal radiographs allows us to customize care specifically for your case and to address it with confidence!
Once we have a solid understanding of your issues, we can then utilize specific Chiropractic adjustments, as well as structural corrective exercises (if needed), to help restore proper function to the spine!
To learn more about what we do in our office and to schedule your consultation, give our front desk a call at 701-852-5290. We look forward to meeting you!