Do any of the above sound familiar to you?
If you said yes then you are one of the 80% of Americans that will experience neck pain during their lifetime. Another unfortunate statistic is that up to 50% of Americans will experience chronic neck pain. And I would guarantee (well almost guarantee!) If you don’t have neck pain you know somebody experiencing neck pain right now.
No matter what anybody tells you, please don’t just “live with it”! It is NOT “just part of getting older”. Take action, do something about it! What should you do? Well I can’t give you my answers immediately, you must read on…
Why Does My Neck Hurt?
Now, this is not a simple question to answer. The body unfortunately is not so simple. But let’s learn some basic Anatomy 101 to help you understand the why behind your neck pain. I’ll just give you some numbers: 7, 8, and 26.
The Bones and The Cartilage
Lucky number 7. This is the number of vertebrae (or bones) that make up your cervical spine. Whoa…let’s not get fancy here. I said I would keep this simple. Your cervical spine is a fancy term for your neck, so we will go with neck from here on out!
Ideally these bones are stacked nicely on top of each other with something called a disc in between two vertebrae. Joints (fancy word facet joints) connect each of the vertebrae together. There is typically a nice gentle curve to the neck and everything can work so beautifully. “Can” is the key word here!
Joints of the neck can develop arthritis just like any joint in the body. Arthritis as we age is very common, but you should not have to “live with it”. Ahhh, arthritis, a topic for an upcoming iMove PT blog. But I digress, back to the topic at hand.
The discs mentioned before are made of cartilage and help to absorb stress to our neck. However, just like any other joint in the body, cartilage can begin to wear away over time. The discs can also weaken and begin to bulge or herniate. And this leads us to the number 8!
The Nerves
Numero Ocho, ESPN the Ocho (Dodgeball the movie reference, check it out for two hours of laughter!), the number 8! This number represents the number of paired nerves leaving our neck. OK, I know talking about nerves isn’t as fun as talking about muscles and what muscles do. But I have to tell you, muscles are dumb! Yep, you heard it from me first. Muscles are very important but dumb.
Why would I make such a bold statement? After all, if any of my muscles would hear me make that statement they just may revolt and act up like a misbehaving child! You see it is these 8 paired nerves (meaning they come out of the right and left side of our neck) that control what the muscles are doing. These nerves are the wiring of our body.
Nerves are living and breathing, they truly control what our muscles do, when they contract and when they relax. This is what I was getting at by saying muscles are dumb. It is these super intelligent nerves that are controlling the movement of our body. Easy peasy, right? Nerve fires and the muscle contracts, nerve doesn’t fire and muscle relaxes.
Well when we have an injury to our neck, all of a sudden these nerves leap into action and say, “I’m here to protect you!”. Unfortunately, this Nerve Superhero sometimes does too much.. stays active fighting the villains too long..the nerve gets too excited.. and causes our muscles to constantly contract.
You can imagine what happens then. The muscle gets tired as it is constantly working because Nerve Superhero is protecting you from the villains. A tired muscle will weaken, develop tightness, develop spasms, and eventually, you will have pain!
The Muscles
Finally! We are now going to talk about the number 26. You have a total of 26 muscles supporting your head and neck. Hard to believe that one little part of the body has that many muscles. If you read the iMove Blog from March 29, 2021, you know all about the weight of the head with ideal posture and then with what we call a forward head posture. The weight of the head can increase up to 300% when we develop bad posture.
You mean you didn’t read that great blog? No worries, through the power of technology, here is a link that will take you right to the blog: Posture…Don’t Skip This Blog!
The muscles of your neck give your head and neck stability. They help you to turn your head to the right, to the left, up, down, and all around. They work beautifully, until…you are at a stop light enjoying your day and when out of nowhere your car gets rear-ended. Within a day or two you will start to develop muscle pain because of the trauma your neck experienced during the car accident.
Muscles are truly amazing in their ability to hold our heads up day after day without us never ever giving thanks to these 26 people. But trust me, once these muscles stop working you will need help.
What Should I Do About My Neck Pain?
Now that you know a little bit more about your neck anatomy the question becomes well that’s great…how can I get better?
Well I can’t give you all of the iMove PT secrets in 1 blog! Our next blog in 2 weeks will be all about treatments, specifically the hands-on treatments you can receive once you enter into the iMove PT community. But I will leave you with one treatment that is a winner for people with neck pain and headaches. Click on the video link below, watch it with your partner or friend, and they can do a little bit of gentle home therapy on you!
This video is not to take the place of a skilled iMove PT physical therapist, but is meant to provide you with a little bit of assistance with your neck pain! Here is the link as promised: Soft Tissue Massage: Suboccipital Muscles
If you are tired of your neck pain and ready to do something about it, iMove PT is here for you. We will go where you are and will give you a full 60 minutes of the care you deserve, the care you should receive every single physical therapy session.
If you have any questions about how to start receiving physical therapy with iMove PT please contact us at 636.893.8312 or email us at info@imovephysicaltherapy.com. We look forward to you joining our community! Thank you for reading!