Chiropractic therapy and specific exercises for the neck muscles have been shown to be one of the most effective treatment methods to help patients suffering from neck pain. For over 100 years chiropractic care has been helping patients who have neck discomfort. This article will discuss how chiropractic care and specific exercises given to a patient by a chiropractor can help with discomfort of the neck.
Most people know that chiropractors help those with neck discomfort by finding and correcting misalignments and improperly moving joints of bones of the neck called the cervical vertebrae. This helps alleviate pain that may have begun suddenly from an accident or may have accumulated through minor irritations and poor head and neck posture.
In addition to utilizing “spinal adjustments” to correct physical abnormalities of the cervical spine doctors of chiropractic also train patients to perform strengthening and stretching exercises which enhance outcomes. These exercises speed healing and pain relief and help, long-term, to improve upper body posture to keep painful conditions from recurring.
These exercises are simple and easy to perform and take very little time. No exercise equipment is needed. The patient is educated to perform the exercises on their own. In most cases the muscles in the front of the neck and the chest are excessively tight. This causes head and shoulders to slouch forward. The muscles in the back of the neck and between the shoulder blades are usually weak and cannot pull head and shoulders back sufficiently.
The human head weighs approximately 10 to 14 pounds which is equivalent to the weight of a bowling ball. If the head and upper body are directly over the thorax and lower body we can consider this to be proper posture. However, if the head is even two or three inches forward it causes the muscles and spinal joints to have to support the equivalent of two or three bowling balls. It’s no wonder that many people who have to sit at desk jobs for long periods of time and up having neck pain, upper back pain and tension headaches. When we consider that children start sitting for long hours when they weekend kindergarten and sustain long periods of sitting posture through adulthood it’s no wonder that we have reached nearly epidemic problems due to poor ergonomics.
By utilizing methods of chiropractic care and specific stretching and strengthening neck exercises a great majority of patients can avoid taking pain medications and invasive surgery and gain relief from neck pain.
