Neck Pain Relief

Effective Neck Pain Relief at San Pedro Chiropractic Clinic

Imagine waking up expecting to have a great day, but as you move your head, a jolting pain crawls from your shoulder up to your neck. Definitely not a great way to start your day, right? This pain may make it hard to wash your hair in the shower, put on a shirt, or even turn your head while driving. What gives? Read on to see common causes of neck pain, and how we help our patients through it in the office.

Causes of neck pain

Neck pain can come from a number of reasons, common causes include:

• Irritated muscles or joints in your neck
• Disc injuries
• Pinched nerves
• Traumas (sports, work, auto injuries)
• Osteoarthritis

In addition to the above causes of neck pain, there are a multitude of other factors that may also play a role, such as: your posture, if you perform repetitive movements in your neck, how you sleep, and even your stress. It’s important to look at the big picture when properly understanding neck pain.

Testing for neck pain

The right testing leads to the best assessment and treatment recommendations. In our office we test: 

• Range of motion (how well your neck moves)
• Orthopedic testing (to help guide our diagnosis)
• Muscle and joint palpation (to see what is tender and tight)
• Diagnostic imaging (x-rays in many cases to check for osteoarthritis or other injury)

Neck Pain Treatment

Our treatment typically involves three components:

• Chiropractic Manipulation – This is called an “adjustment” and helps improve your overall spinal or joint function, while also improving your alignment.
• Massage Therapy – Our therapists provide massage/manual therapy to loosen up knots / tender / tight parts in your muscles. This can also help improve circulation and range of motion.
• Therapeutic Exercise – Based on our exam and findings, we recommend the appropriate stretches and exercises that can help your posture and speed up recovery. This way you can loosen up your tight muscles and strengthen the ones that may be weak.

In addition, advice and ergonomic recommendations are always made to help you heal quickly. Read on to learn about whiplash and headache treatment.

Whiplash Treatment

Whiplash can occur in car accidents, sports injuries, or other traumas. It happens when there is a rapid jerking motion of our head and neck, leading to spraining, straining, or tearing of our muscles and connective tissues, our nerves can also be damaged during a whiplash injury.

Whiplash treatment requires extra care as it often comes in the form of trauma. Many treatment plans we recommend are in the range of 2-4 weeks, whiplash injuries may take much longer to fully recover, sometimes up to 8-12 weeks. Our goal is to make sure you get back to normal and reduce the risk of long term pain or pain in the future. For whiplash, we provide our usual treatments such as chiropractic, manual therapy, and exercise prescription, but often times utilize other modalities as well to help control pain such as:

• Infrared heat (deep heat for increased circulation)
• TENS therapy (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for pain control)
• Kinesiology taping (to support injured tissues)

Headache Treatment

Headaches are quite common in today’s world, and can lead to significant disruption in our quality of life. They can keep us up at night, make it difficult to concentrate, and cause extra stress in our lives. There are many types of headaches, and fortunately chiropractic can help with a few of the more common types, see below:

• • Migraine headache
  • Cervicogenic headache
  • Tension headache

Our doctors are happy to help, please call us at (310) 548-5656 or send us a message from our contact page to book an appointment right here in San Pedro.