What Causes Neck Pain?
Some common causes of neck pain include:
- Injury and Accidents: If your neck is subject to a sudden forced movement that causes it to move in a whipping motion, injuries to the surrounding and supporting tissues often result and cause tightening and contracting. This constriction and pressure lead to muscle fatigue, which produces pain and stiffness.
- Growing Older: Various degenerative disorders, including osteoarthritis, spinal stenosis, and degenerative disc disease, directly affect your spine, resulting in neck pain.
- Daily Life: Postural stress brought on by poor posture, along with obesity and weak abdominal muscles disrupt your spinal balance. This imbalance causes your neck to bend forward in compensation. Additionally, stress and emotional tension also cause your muscle tightening and contraction, which leads to pain and stiffness.
How is Neck Pain Diagnosed?
When you see a medical professional at Results Physical Therapy for neck pain relief, you receive a thorough examination so that you receive the proper diagnosis for the specific cause of your neck pain.
One of our team members will review your medical history and looks at your walk, posture, and spinal alignment to help him better understand your body mechanics. Imaging tests, including X-rays and MRIs, further help him diagnose the exact cause of your neck pain and help him create a customized treatment plan.
How is Neck Pain Treated?
Our medical staff uses a combination of techniques as part of your neck pain treatment plan. Physical therapy offers education and exercises that focus on the structures that support your spine, its joints, as well as the supporting muscles, tendons, and ligaments, including:
- Education: To help manage your pain and accelerate tissue healing, you learn the principles of stretching and strengthening, as well as proper posture and ergonomic fundamentals that help preserve your spine. Physical therapy also helps create a new awareness of your body mechanics.
- Accelerate the Stages of Healing: Your physical therapist works to reduce your pain and your inflammatory cycle through the use of ice, heat, ultrasound, traction, and electrical stimulation. He also helps restore your muscular flexibility, joint mobility, and spine motion by introducing stretching exercises and progressions that help get rid of your pain and stiffness and strengthen the muscles contributing to your neck pain.
- Manage Exacerbations: No matter how careful you are, forgetful moments and performing activities improperly lead to flare-ups. However, with the new knowledge gained through physical therapy, your symptoms and suffering are reduced to days, instead of weeks or months.
Call or make an appointment online today at Results Physical Therapy in Gainesville and Fairfax, Virginia, to get help relieving your bothersome neck pain.
