Hey everyone. My name’s Dr. Roger Sais. I’m the clinical director here at PA Pain and Rehab in Philadelphia, beautiful city of brotherly love. Today, I want to talk to you about neck pain.
It’s one of the most common problems that we see in our practices. Honestly, it’s one of the most common problems that people in general, in our society, experience on a day to day basis.
Neck Pain Causes in Philadelphia, PA
So the patients that we see that are experiencing neck pain are usually injured. Car accidents, work related accidents, people that have slipped and fallen and injured themselves. But most of those patients who are injured sustain a cervical or neck injury.
So we talked in a previous video, three things that you can do to determine whether or not you have a neck problem that needs further evaluation. Let’s say you’ve determined you need further evaluation. And you know, you’re coming to see us and you want to know how are we gonna fix your neck pain?
So chiropractors are concerned with a lot of different things, but mostly structure. So if your spine is not functioning properly, you’re just not gonna feel as good as you can. You’re just not gonna work as good as you should.
So the neck is this delicate area. It’s not supported by a lot of muscle like you have on the low back. It’s not supported by the ribs that we have in the middle back. The neck is kind of just out there and it’s got this bowling ball that’s sitting on top of it that weighs at least 10 pounds.
So when you’re injured in a car accident, we’ve discussed this in other videos, when you are injured, whether you hit someone or someone hits you and your neck gets whipped back and forth in a car accident, this could happen at work, this could happen in a sports injury but if you damage the neck, you’re gonna experience pain.
So if you don’t fix the problem, it doesn’t go away. So we’re very concerned about alignment. You’re supposed to have a curve in the spine. Most of the patients that we see in general as a result of some type of car accident or some type of injury do not have the curve in their neck.
Chiropractic Neck Pain Care in Philadelphia, PA
So that’s an alignment issue. We’re very concerned about alignment, so if your neck has strained out, we know that you among other things have an alignment problem. We also know because we have these things called cell phones that we’re all hunched over. So again, that is another thing that can affect the alignment.
So we see this alignment issue where most people have a forward head posture where their head is in front of their shoulders where their ears have shifted in front of the shoulders, so that is another alignment issue.
So we want to make sure that we’re able to stabilize that and bring the head back because we know that if the head is forward, all the cervical vertebrae, all the vertebrae in the neck are out of alignment in relation to the body.
So that’s one aspect. We’re also concerned about range of motion. So when we have patients in front of us, we’re gonna have them go through the different ranges of motion to see if their head is moving the way, head and neck are moving the way they’re supposed to.
If they’re not, we know that’s indicative of a problem possibly in the joint. These joints are all designed to move. So if they’re not moving that is a problem, that could cause that pain as well.
Chiropractic Neck Pain Treatment in Philadelphia, PA
We’re also gonna be concerned about the soft tissue. So the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that support and move your neck and hold your head up, if those muscles are tight or taught and aren’t moving well, again, that can contribute immensely to your neck pain.
People who have neck pain also experience headaches. So again, if you’re having alignment issues, if you’re having range of motion issues, if the soft tissue doesn’t function properly, you’re gonna have problems.
And lastly, we’re also very concerned about the discs. So the discs can also be an extreme source of pain. So the discs are in between each vertebrae. There are these dark structures in between each vertebrae and this white, this is the bone, the disc, if there’s unequal pressure on the disc, can push into the spinal cord or the nerves.
Picture like an ice cream sandwich, right? So if you push down on the ice cream sandwich in the middle, it squishes the ice cream out the sides. If you push down on the front of the ice cream sandwich it pushes the ice cream backwards.
So when there’s too much pressure on the disc as a result of an injury or cell phone or computer use or anything else that you can think of, it pushes the disc or the ice cream backwards into the spinal cord or it could also irritate the nerves.
So this is a significant problem that we see in our practices, and all of our doctors are trained to help eliminate the stress off the discs to improve the range of motion and alignment of the spine, so not only that you feel better but we can get you functioning as good as you’re supposed to.
Everybody deserves to feel good. And when you’re injured and you have neck pain, it really disrupts your quality of life.
So if you’re watching this video and this information kind of, you know, a light bulb goes off in your head and says, “Hey,” you know and you say, “Hey, maybe I can benefit from chiropractic “or at least an evaluation,” why don’t you drop a comment below or send us an email or give us a call or if you know someone who’s been consistently struggling with neck pain as a result of an injury or they don’t even know why, again, tell them to give us a call.
So I hope this message finds you well. I hope this information was helpful and we’ll see you on the next video.
