Chiropractic care and specific exercises help patients with neck pain

Chiropractic care and specific exercises help patients with neck pain

Chiropractic care and specific exercises for the neck muscles have been proven to be one of the most effective treatment methods to help patients with neck pain. Chiropractic has been helping patients with neck problems for over 100 years. This article explains how chiropractic care and specific exercises given to a patient by a chiropractor can help with neck problems.

Most people know that chiropractors help people with neck problems by finding and correcting misalignments and improper movements of the joints of the neck bones, called the cervical vertebrae. This helps relieve pain that has arisen suddenly from an accident or accumulated from minor irritation and poor head and neck posture.

In addition to using “spine adjustments” to correct physical abnormalities of the cervical spine, chiropractic doctors also train patients to perform strengthening and stretching exercises that improve results. These exercises accelerate healing and pain relief and, in the long term, help improve upper body posture to prevent recurrence of painful conditions.

These exercises are simple and easy to perform and take very little time. No training equipment is required. The patient is trained to carry out the exercises independently. In most cases, the muscles in the front of the neck and chest are excessively tense. This causes the head and shoulders to sag forward. The muscles in the neck and between the shoulder blades are usually weak and cannot pull the head and shoulders back sufficiently.

The human head weighs approximately 10 to 14 pounds, which is the weight of a bowling ball. If the head and upper body lie directly above the chest and lower body, we can consider this to be a correct posture. However, if the head is only five to three inches forward, the muscles and spinal joints must support the equivalent of two or three bowling balls. It's no wonder that many people who have to sit at a desk for long periods end up with neck pain, upper back pain and tension headaches. When we consider that children sit for long periods of time on weekends in kindergarten and maintain long sitting postures into adulthood, it's no wonder that we have near epidemic levels of problems due to poor ergonomics.

By using chiropractic methods and targeted stretching and strengthening exercises for the neck, a large majority of patients can avoid pain medications and invasive surgeries and relieve neck pain.

Inspired by James Schofield