What Causes Neck Pain?

The most common causes of neck pain are:

•  Poor posture/spinal misalignment
•  Whiplash/Trauma/Injury
•  Prolonged use of devices (tech-neck)
•  Poor sleeping habits
•  Repetitive strain/stress injury
•  Sports injury
•  Stress
•  Underlying disease or pathology

Once other diseases have been ruled out, the primary cause is often poor spinal alignment/poor posture. In particular when your head position goes forward. When bones of your spine are out of alignment, it places significant pressure on the ligaments, muscles, discs and nerves surrounding the neck region.

This can then create all kinds of problems including pain and dysfunction in the neck itself. The pressure on the nerves of your neck can result in neck pain, headaches, migraines, jaw pain, or numbness and tingling in the arms.

Do you want to MASK THE SYMPTOMS or CORRECT THE CAUSE?

There are two ways you can go about addressing this problem:

1. MASK THE SYMPTOMS

Reducing the symptoms of pain through medication, or ‘quick fix’ methods can help remove the initial pain you are experiencing. However, it is not correcting the underlying cause of the problem, which in most cases is poor spinal alignment.

The pain will return once the medication has worn off.

People can spend lots of time and money dealing with the pain without ever addressing the true underlying cause of their problem. These people can have many bouts of pain or headaches throughout their life. As time goes on, the duration and severity of the problem is likely to get worse.

2. CORRECT THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM

Instead of just masking the symptoms as they appear, you can look for what the underlying cause of the pain is and resolve that issue.
Imagine there is a fire burning in your house. The fire alarm will sound to give you warning that there is a fire. When this happens do you want to put out the fire or just turn the alarm off? Of course putting out the fire is the smart thing to do. Neck pain is a signal that there is an underlying problem, just like the fire alarm is a signal telling you there is a fire. Taking pain medication is like turning off the fire alarm without putting out the fire!

Chiropractic’s focus is ‘putting out the fire.’

The ‘fire’ itself is likely poor spinal alignment/poor posture.

HOW CAN CHIROPRACTIC HELP?

At Oxenford LIFE Chiropractic we take a holistic approach to helping you. Assessing your entire spine, rather than just looking at your neck in isolation.

We do this through assessing and correcting your posture, balance, alignment and overall spinal health. This takes pressure off the muscles, ligaments, discs, and nerves of the neck and allows the body to heal naturally. Much like putting out the fire instead of turning off the fire alarm.

Correcting your spinal alignment with chiropractic care can help you get relief as well as helping prevent the problem from returning in the future.

By ensuring your spine has great alignment it also takes pressure off your nerve system. Your nerve system is responsible for sending and receiving messages from your brain and body. A clear communication pathway between the brain and body allows your body to heal and function at its very best.

OUR CHIROPRACTIC METHOD

Our chiropractic method focuses on correcting spinal alignment and posture for people of all ages using spinal adjustments, postural exercises, spinal tractioning and ergonomic advice. This gives you control in your own healing process and helps you get better results faster, while preventing the problem from returning again in the future.
Even after the first adjustment, people will often notice improvements in their pain, posture and movement.

POSTURE AND NERVOUS SYSTEM FUNCTION

The nervous system (brain and spinal cord) is our communication pathway throughout our whole body. It helps to regulate and control every action in our body. It is extremely important that our nervous system is working at its optimum if we want to function well and live a healthy life.

Because our spine encloses and protects our nervous system, it can have a direct influence on how well our brain, spinal cord and nerves are functioning.

If the alignment of the bones in our spine start to lose their ideal position or become dysfunctional it can impact the nervous system negatively.

Improving spinal alignment and posture helps your body to function and feel its best while reducing the likelihood of encountering injuries and greater problems in the future.

PREVENTION

At Oxenford LIFE Chiropractic our goal is to fix bodies and help prevent injuries from returning. Ultimately, we want to help your body work better so you can enjoy life uninhibited by pain. Once posture is corrected, it is recommended to keep it in good shape. Similar to continuing brushing your teeth once a cavity has been fixed by the dentist. This is best managed through a maintenance/wellness adjustment and exercise protocol, along with our advice around day to day living.