Experienced Manhattan Physical Therapists Give Tips To Cure Neck Pain Fast
Neck pain can affect a lot of people… even busy New Yorkers. It’s a horrible feeling to wake up and realize that you can’t move your head without feeling currents of pain radiating up and down your neck. It also just serves to remind you how much you turn your head every day… and even a jostle on the subway can make life feel miserable.
Don’t fret – in this post, experienced physical therapists give tips to cure neck pain fast. Read on to learn how physical therapy can help neck pain.
Common Neck Pain Symptoms and Causes
Here are some symptoms that you may feel:
- Pain from keeping your head in one place for too long. This can happen to people who drive long distances or use computers all day.
- Tightness and spasms in your neck muscles
- You can’t move your head – like a crick in your neck, for example.
- Headaches, since the neck pain can travel up to the brain.
There are several causes. You could have been in a car accident and gotten whiplash. You could have slept on a pillow that was not the right size and thrown your whole spine out of alignment. It could be from muscle strains from leaning forward to look at your laptop or your phone… or even gritting your teeth or reading a book in bed. Your neck joints could be worn down. It could be a compressed nerve from a herniated disc.
Neck Pain Exercises
One thing that you can do to relieve neck pain is to strengthen the muscles in your neck. This can help ward off postural problems that do lead to your neck pain. Here are some things that you can add to your daily exercise routine:
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Neck Stretches
The first thing you want to do is to loosen up your neck so that you won’t hurt yourself. They include tilting your head back and forth and to the side. Rotating your head around can help and also rolling your shoulders back and forth is beneficial.
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Exercise
You can do things like back burns, where you lean against with your feet about four inches away and your head against the wall and touch your head, and chin tucks, where you sit with your back against a wall and tuck in your chin while letting the back of your head hit the wall. Do these exercises every other day. Otherwise your neck muscles won’t heal and you can wind up doing more damage than can lead to neck pain.
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Aerobics
Doing cardiovascular exercise will get the blood flowing to your neck muscles and loosen them up. You will also see an improvement in the range of motion of your neck.
Other Ways To Relieve Neck Pain
There are ways physical therapists can help neck pain, both with passive and active therapy. Passive means they do the work, like heat or massage therapy. They may also use ice packs, ultrasound, and electrotherapy. Usually they will do this if there is both pain and swelling in your neck area. Active means you move your body and do exercises and stretches with the Manhattan physical therapist.
Other methods include just resting for several days or longer to allow your neck to heal. You can take painkillers to temporarily stop the pain, but you need to be careful not to do it all the time, since that might mask the real issue and have you make it worse if you keep moving around.
While neck pain can literally be… a pain in the neck, if you do the above, you can get relief for that. There are things that you need to look out for, though, since these symptoms can be a sign of more serious conditions that can require emergency medical care.
- If you find that you cannot bend your head forward, then that could be a sign that you have meningitis. This is something that you cannot just rest off. Seek emergency care, since it affects your brain and can become rapidly fatal.
- Rheumatoid arthritis could be another source of the neck pain. Cancer could be a possibility. Seek medical care if you feel numbness or weakness in other parts of your body along with the neck pain.
There are a lot of resources for you to be able to walk around with a pain-free neck. If you are not sure, then you can always talk to your doctor, who will likely give you some tips or point you to a New York physical therapist. Take a look at how you are sitting when you are using your phone. Try to have good posture. All of these things can gel together to make a stronger neck. Then you can enjoy life again.
Contact Our Local New York Physiotherapists Today!
Are you having problems with your neck? You can contact our local New York physiotherapists today! The staff at Empire Physical Medicine and Pain Management can work with you to get your neck feeling great again. There are two locations – Midtown Manhattan and Wall Street. Give us a call today to make an appointment – 646-665-7109.
Empire Physical Medicine & Pain Management
7 W 45th St floor 9,
New York, NY 10036
Phone: (646) 665-7109
Website: https://manhattanpainrelief.com
