Improving your posture

If the problem is very recent, perhaps you’ve only had it for a couple of days, it is quite possible it’s just as a result of not sitting properly at your desk or bad posture. If you regularly sit hunched over at your desk, you may have strained a muscle in your neck which can result from the neck having to weight-bear the head when you’re leaning forward.

For this type of pain, it’s important that you start to pay attention to your posture to make sure the problem doesn’t get any worse. Make sure that you are sitting with a straight back, your shoulders should be back, and head in line with the shoulders.

If your symptoms persist, at this point it’s best to see someone for a posture evaluation. Spinal misalignments are definitely something we see very often at the clinic, but can be treated using our Spinal Impulse Adjusting technology. By detecting movement, the treatment is able to deliver a controlled, repeatable treatment that delivers all the benefits of traditional chiropractic or osteopathic manipulations without discomfort and with much less risk.

Osteopathic Treatment

In some cases, pain in the neck can be originating from conditions such as arthritis, a slipped, herniated or bulging disc, degenerative disc disease or whiplash from an injury. Without intervention, pain will only become worse over time. In the case of these conditions, early detection is often associated with a smoother, quicker recovery process. We offer three different, but equally effective, types of therapies that can help to relieve your back pain depending on its cause:

• Laser Therapy: for acute or chronic conditions
• Spinal Decompression: for disc injuries
• Spinal Impulse Adjusting Technology: for spinal misalignments and stiff joints

Medications

Although medications may seem like a good idea at the time to relieve the pain immediately. It’s important to remember that although you may be relieving the pain, it will allow you to keep doing more of the action that is potentially causing your neck pain in the first place. Continuing in this way will only allow the condition to become more chronic, and likewise, more difficult to treat. In fact, a study from the University of Sydney in Australia publicised by the NHS in 2017 even stated that Ibuprofen had little more benefit than a placebo at treating back pain.

Daily Activities

The way that you’re holding yourself at your desk is important, but also make sure that your computer monitor is at eye-level, to prevent your head from leaning forward and causeing neck pain. Your chair should also be the right height so that your arms are at a right angle and can comfortably rest on the desk, avoiding shoulder pain. These two factors may not go hand-in-hand together, which may mean that you will have to prop up the monitor using some books in order to make it the right height. Following these steps will greatly reduce the likelihood of persistent neck and shoudler pain.

So now you’re sitting up straight at your desk, you’re going to need to be aware of your posture when you’re away from your desk as well. It’s too easy to blame the way that you’re sitting at work to be the reason you’re experiencing neck and shoulder pain. But, if you regularly go home, get straight into your pyjamas and watch a few episodes of Netflix in bed, make sure you’re aware of how you’re holding your spine. It’s very common to lay down with your neck raised, which is also just as likely to cause neck pain, stiffness or contribute later to a more severe problem. Although it may seem comfortable at the time, repeating the position over a few months or years can result in the spine becoming too rounded at the top.

Holding your head further forward than you need to results in the muscles in the neck having to work extra hard to support a higher than usual weight. It will also create compression around the discs in the neck area, you may start to become stiff as the muscles become tired and build-up lactic acid. This is what gives you those terrible knots on the back of your shoulders. Avoid this, because constant and chronic neck and shoulder pain can really get you down!

Incorporating good posture and having an awareness of how you hold your body early enough, can help to subside cases of neck or shoulder pain that only last for a couple of days, and potentially prevent a more serious problem from occurring in the future.

https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/ibuprofen-barely-better-than-placebo-at-treating-back-pain/  (NHS Ibuprofen Study)