Neck Pain
Neck pain can be caused by sitting at a computer or doing desk work, where you are hunched over for long periods often with poor posture or repeated bending, repetitive lifting or manual work. Neck pain can arise after an accident where you hit your head or in a car accident where your neck is subject to a whiplash injury. Stress can cause neck pain too and when we are stressed we often don’t breathe properly, holding tension in out upper back area.
Why Does My Neck Hurt When I Work At A Desk?
Your neck has to support the weight and movement of your head and also contains the vast majority of nerves that connect from your brain to the rest of your body. With the amount of driving, computer work and other daily activities that most of us do, it is not surprising that we often need a help from a chiropractor in Southampton to help keep our necks doing their job without causing pain.
When a neck loses its ability to move properly due to over tight muscles blocking the movement, degeneration of the joints in the neck or injury from an accident or overuse, the nerves that arise in the neck and pass up to the neck or down to the mid back, shoulders or arms and hands can become irritated. This is ‘referred pain’ – see below right red areas are areas that pain can spread to from the neck. Referred pain can lead to headaches.
If the nerves that pass to the arms are irritated in the neck, this is called cervical radiculopathy – see the left picture below. Any pain in the shoulders, arms or mid back necessitates a neck examination in case the pain is coming from there rather than those areas directly.
What Can Chiropractors in Southampton Do For Neck Pain
Treatment consists of specific adjustments to free stiff joints and reduce spinal nerve irritation. We may also recommend ice, heat or massage treatment among other things. We also support the treatment with individual advice about your lifestyle, work and exercise, in order to help in managing the condition and preventing a recurrence of the problem.
A frequent cause of neck pain is reduced stability in the shoulder blades – the middle of your back should move well and the shoulder blades should form a stable structure for the shoulders and arms to move on. However, sitting for long periods incorrectly often causes the mid back to stiffen up. That makes the shoulder blades move more to compensate, which often gives rise to tension in the back of the shoulders and the neck muscles. You may feel nothing in the shoulder blade area but a lot of discomfort in the neck.
This is why when you visit a chiropractor in Southampton at the Avenue Clinic, they take great care to find out precisely what is causing your neck to function incorrectly and cause pain. Then you can be treated and given advice to help stop the pain from coming back. If you don’t treat the cause, the problem may be helped for a short period but will come back. We treat the cause not just the pain!