Neck pain is a common complaint we see in our office and both doctors have dealt with it personally as well. The neck can be an intimidating region for patients to have treatment on, but the care we provide at ICFM is safe and effective!
The neck, or the cervical spine as we call it, is a region of the body that has a multitude of muscles, nerves, and joints that can be a potential contributing factor to your neck pain. We make sure to rule in/rule out potential causes to your pain when we assess this area! I’ll preview three different causes of your neck pain that we assess in the office!
First one being muscle tightness and trigger points. Both of these can be not only painful but annoying. Muscle tightness can be caused by multiple things: occupation, posture, the way you workout, and even overcompensation from one muscle to make up for non-active muscles. Our intake paperwork, assessment, and follow-up questions will help us decide if that is something we need to look further into! Our treatments and exercises for muscle tightness will be geared towards what the cause is for the muscle tightness and help decrease pain as well as frequency of pain.
Second cause is joint hypermobility. You can either have joint hypermobility (too much movement) or joint hypomobility (not enough movement). Joint motion can contribute to neck pain and even muscle tightness! We want equal motion of each joint in the cervical spine (neck) to improve overall neck motion! We assess this by palpating the joints in the neck and look at overall motion of the neck. Our treatment and exercises are geared towards improving joint motion in the neck to improve overall motion.
Last cause we look at is joint hypomobility. Hypomobility is different in the fact that our treatments and exercises are geared towards stabilizing muscles to reduce too much motion in the neck. Hyper/Hypomobility go hand in hand because if we lack motion in joints of the neck the body will overcompensate by creating too much motion in other joints so that we can perform normal daily neck motions like looking over your shoulder or looking up.
We take the time to make sure we are thorough with each complaint that walks into our office. We want our patients to leave our office having an understanding of what is going on with their pain and having the confidence knowing that we can help! Contact our office for any questions you may have!
Call or Text: (402) 769-6624
