The Fight Against Neck Pain

Over the past couple of months I have been a lot of rotations in Pain Medicine. The clinic side of this specialty is inundated with patients who were either hurt at work or in a motor vehicle accident. Often time, however, the patients all fit the same phenotype. These patients, for the most part, had low muscle mass, high body fat, and poor posture. This led me to think about the prevention of, and consequences of, their presenting injuries and pain.

In a previous posting I told a story about the bodybuilder and the runner who went on the extremely long hike. The point of that story was that the bodybuilder had better joint support through his muscles and therefore had less joint pain. I think this same concept can be applied to everyone and for the prevention of most injuries.

Now we know that most patients who have pain following an injury are sent to either physical therapy and/or to a chiropractor. The purpose of this in addition to increasing ROM, is to strengthen the surrounding muscles. For example, in a person who had a cervical whiplash injury it is prudent to strengthen the para-cervical muscles to alleviate the pressure on the inter-articular joints between the vertebrae.

This all makes complete sense.

But what about the encouragement of neck and cervical strengthening exercises in our daily lives—that is prior to an injury. Yes, there are articles out there showing that neck flexion exercises are beneficial in the treatment of acute and chronic neck pan. Osteopathic medicine is not only about treating pain but also preventing pain. This is the way my mind works. I understand that it is a bit morbid to think that we should all be doing neck flexion exercises so that when we get into a car-accident we are better off. It wouldn’t only be for that purpose. Strengthening our neck muscles can have a lot of positive benefits. For example, when we sit at work and are looking at the computer screen for 8 hours and then more when we go home we are not engaging our muscles (or not the right muscles at least). This leads to a bit of muscle atrophy and then after years of work and same habits we end up with neck pain. Neck flexion exercises should be incorporated into our daily routine. It should be the same concept as looking away from the computer screen for a few minutes every twenty minutes to prevent eye strain. Our eye muscles are smaller and therefore we feel the effects of fatigues more readily and so we pay more attention and do something about it. Unfortunately, our ensuing neck pain can take months to years to develop and become a chronic problem. So let’s start doing our neck flexion exercises now.

Let’s prevent neck pain. Let’s miss less days of work. Let’s save legal fees. Let’s live our lives without pain.