Neck Pain and Headaches
Care for Neck Pain and Headache
Neck pain with or with out accompanying headache is becoming a common complaint as people are spending more hours on the computer. Although there can be several causes of neck pain and headaches one thing all neck pain has in common; your brain and nervous system are behind it. Computer use can stress your brain creating imbalances that result in muscle pain. If you think about it muscles and joints are passive and do nothing on their own. They are like marionette puppets only capable of movement by the puppeteer, and the puppeteer of your body is your brain. Whether you stretch a muscle, heat it up or cool it down it will have a specific effect on your brain and how your brain fires back down to your body. This determines whether you heal and recover quickly or stay in pain, stiffness and discomfort for an unnecessary long period of time.
Causes of neck pain and headaches
- computer use
- trauma or auto accident
- stomach sleeping
- forward bent posture
- hormone imbalance
- any prolonged posture with arms at shoulder height
What I See in Those With Neck Pain and Headaches
What I have found those with neck pain have is common is one or both shoulders rounded forward and one or both shoulder blades wing or stick out on the back rather than lie flat on the ribs. It is almost impossible to sit or stand with rounded shoulders and not let the head come forward in front of the body. As gravity is pulling the head down the muscles at the back of the spine are straining to hold the head up. These muscles are attached to ribs and vertebrae that become misaligned.
What Those With Neck Pain and Headaches Tell Me They Feel
Patients complain of a severe pulling and tightness from the skull to the shoulder and often ache in the muscles between the shoulder blades. On touching the chest muscle (pectoralis major and minor) much to the patient’s surprise it is very tender and tight.
What is Creating the Neck Pain and Headache
The neck pain and tight muscles are created as your brain is prevented from sending messages to the muscles of your chest to relax and not pull your shoulders forward. When your shoulders are allowed to draw forward shoulder blades are pulled away from the spine the overstretched muscles working to pull the shoulder blades toward the spine become weak and hurt. These muscles are attached to vertebrae and discs putting an unnatural strain on them. Several shoulder and upper back muscles are attached to the skull, as they tighten they draw the skull back and this can be the cause of tension headaches.
What I Can Do To Help Correct the Problem
This problem is solvable. I adjust the spine and limbs to send messages to the brain, so the brain will fire back down to the spine and muscles in a different pattern. Stimulation from the spine is very powerful to the brain.
Brain cells should fire in a smooth, fast pattern (much like the cylinders of a car’s engine). Improving the firing pattern of brain cells stabilizes the cell membrane creating a healthier cell. When groups of healthy brain cells fire together they wire together and this increases the speed of brain activity. Increased wiring and increased speed is a good thing. Sometimes my intent is to create excitation or increase the input from brain to body, other times to create inhibition or a calming of a particular pathway to the body. When the brain repeatedly receives these types of specific stimulation it makes changes in its wiring that is long lasting. This long lasting rewiring of the brain is called placidity. That is my goal and the solution to neck pain and headaches.
