Do you really know the causes of your Neck pain… really?

I have mentioned before that if you do not remove the causes of your neck pain you will continue to suffer from recurrent or constant pain. This is the nature of neck pain; its either constant pain or people are on a continual cycle of neck pain-no neck pain. The most common scenario in the clinic is that people come to me and have no history of injury. In other words, when I ask them how it happened they have no idea. ‘I just woke up with it and couldn’t turn my neck’ is one of the most common statements I hear from my clients. It just mysteriously appeared out of no-where. The great mystery when it comes to neck pain is that there really is no mystery after all. I have written more on this in my post ‘playing Russian roulette with your neck’

But let’s get back to the causes because this is where the bottom line is. I have repeatedly said that if you do not remove the causes of your neck pain you will never be pain free permanently. When you think about it makes sense after all if you stubbed your toe on a rock each and every day you would continue to have pain because you continue to injure it-your neck is exactly the same. If you continue to aggravate, injure and hurt your neck every day you will continue to suffer from neck pain. This is just common sense right?

However, two weeks ago I had a client in the clinic who was a truck driver. I was teaching him what correct posture was when sitting and driving in his truck because I told him that this was his major cause of his neck pain. He promptly interrupted me and stated that it’s not postural because he went to an orthopaedic surgeon and had had x-rays and he had degenerative joint disease. His joints showed signs of wear and tear. He was lead to believe that these x-rays had given him a definitive diagnosis however when I mentioned that there is very little connection between degenerative changes and pain he looked at me like I was crazy. I told him that people who have major degenerative changes in their joints could also be pain free. In fact, every day throughout the world people get MRI’s and x-rays and have joints showing wear and tear but are asymptomatic-they have no pain!

Studies have shown that by the age 60-65, 95% of men and 70% of women have evidence of degeneration in their necks. Not only that but very often they present with disc degeneration, osteophytes and sometimes even spinal cord compression and are symptom free. Matsumoto et al (1998) investigated nearly 500 pain free individuals with the use of MRI and found signs of disc degeneration in over 90% of those who were aged over 60 years old. Every single person did not suffer from neck pain!

So I told my client that he should begin to assume good postural position in his daily activities to see a difference. I explained to him that poor posture puts excessive stress on his muscles, joints, ligaments, capsules and discs. Furthermore, a forward head position jams the upper cervicals into extension which can have them grinding away at each other all day every day. This will not only aggravate and inflame the joints and surrounding tissues but will also worsen his degeneration. I suggested he ‘sit tall’ and do some exercises to fast track his progress and see how he felt.

3 days later I received a phone call from my client wanting to thank me for the advice. He was pain free and not only that, he now was sleeping without waking up 3-4 times a night from neck pain. This was because when you stop hurting your neck all day it won’t be so painful each night-just like stubbing your toe. If you stub your toe all day it will be sore at night.

Is your pain coming from your arthritis or degenerative joint disease or is it simply because you are aggravating your neck in all that you do?

For more on this, check out my 2 DVD set which will be available very soon. It addresses everything from disc bulges and how to fix them to finding the real causes of your neck pain so you can become pain free. It’s simple, quick, and effortless and backed by a 100% guarantee if you are not completely satisfied.