Neck Pain Treatment Chatswood

Your vertebral column acts as a ‘suit of armour’, protecting the delicate and vitally important spinal cord. The soft tissues surrounding the spinal column giving it both strength, stability and movement are the ligaments, tendons and muscles. Sprains, strains and spasms of these soft tissues often happens when we overload the spine and its soft tissues, and they can no longer cope with the added tension. This creates small tears in the soft tissues leading to inflammation, swelling and pain.

A disc bulge or herniation can be significant enough to cause referred pain into your shoulders, arms, hands and fingers. Numbness, pins and needles and muscle weakness might also occur.  It can be so severe and excruciating that even breathing hurts!  Yet, on the other hand, a 2015 study found that half of all adults, without any back pain, had at least one disc bulge.  Rather than create pain, this however can cause your body the inability to function to its full potential.

Your neck delicately balances your head (about the weight of a bowling ball) for all of your waking hour.  This is done magnificently and is very energy efficient, as long as your body’s own biomechanics and ergonomics are proper working order.  All too often we see and feel misalignments in the neck created by the lifestyle that we live.  Things like sleeping on your stomach, looking down at a mobile phone for hours, or long hours at a computer can affect how the vertebra position, thus leading to your body being out of balance. The further away the head goes, the harder the back muscles need to work.  Over time this leads to fatigue, loss of strength, microtrauma, degeneration and pain.

Whenever you become stressed (physically, mentally or chemically), your body runs a natural physiological cascade of events.  Stress will naturally increase your blood pressure and heart rate, increase cholesterol, releasing stress hormones, increase inflammation and tense up the muscles in your spine and body. You are getting ready for the fight or flight response. Long term stress causes serious health problems and when it comes to the muscles, they eventually fatigue, chronically inflame, and become painful.

In looking at neck issues it is always important to consider one’s life, previous traumas and lifestyle. Things like Sleeping position and posture; Occupational posture and repetitive movements; the amount of time spent on technology, including laptops and mobile phones; stress levels; and even your birth process can all influence your neck and neck pain

Smartphones, tablets, and computers have quickly become a part of our everyday life. People spend hours per day using these devices for work, messaging with friends and playing the latest games. Often, people sit for hours on end with their neck bent forward, shoulders rounded, and arms holding the phone.  Instead of the phone being at eye level it tends to migrate down into one’s lap.  This type of awkward, unnatural position can lead to a painful condition called “Tech Neck.”

Associated with this can also be tightness across the chest and shoulders; loss of shoulder motion and shoulder pain; tightness across the traps (trapezius muscles) and down the upper back (upper thoracic spine); headaches; loss of movement; inflammation; and even a horn starting to grow out of the back of the head.  When Tech Neck is left or ignored symptoms tend to accumulate and worsen with time, even potentially leading to conditions such as osteoarthritis and degenerative disc disease.

All this due to the excessive amount of time (the most someone has told me is 14 hours each and every day) on technological devices.