Chiropractic care and specific exercises help neck pain patients

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 more than 100 years, chiropractic care has helped patients with neck discomfort. This article will discuss how chiropractic care and the specific exercises that a chiropractor gives a patient can help with neck discomfort.

Most people know that chiropractors help people with neck discomfort by finding and correcting misalignments and incorrectly moving the joints of the neck bones called cervical vertebrae. This helps to relieve pain that may have started suddenly from an accident or that may have built up due to minor irritations and poor head and neck posture.

In addition to using “spinal adjustments” to correct physical abnormalities in the cervical spine, chiropractic physicians also train patients to perform strengthening and stretching exercises that improve outcomes. These exercises speed healing and pain relief and help, in the long run, to improve upper body posture to prevent painful conditions from recurring.

These exercises are simple and easy to perform and require 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 chest are excessively tight. This causes the head and shoulders to lean forward. The muscles in the back of the neck and between the shoulder blades are often weak and cannot pull the head and shoulders back enough.

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 on the chest and lower body, we can consider this to be a suitable posture. However, if the head is even two or three inches forward, the muscles and joints of the spine must 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 have neck pain, upper back pain, and tension headaches. When we consider that children begin to sit for many hours when they go to kindergarten on the weekend and maintain long periods of sitting posture into adulthood, it is no wonder that we have reached near epidemic problems due to poor ergonomics.

By using chiropractic care methods and specific neck stretching and strengthening exercises, the vast majority of patients can avoid taking pain relievers and invasive surgeries and get relief from neck pain.