Neck & Back Pain Help
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Pain When Your X-Ray is Normal
You may be in great pain from simple damaging mechanics. Your X-rays and scans are normal. You may be told nothing is wrong, or to give up favorite activities. Your pain persists from bad postural habits. This is no mystery. Change the bad habits to change the pain.
When Pain Is Not From What's On Your X-Ray
Other times, the scans show some minor problem like arthritis, herniated disc, or degenerating structures. Just like car tires that are mid-life, but perfectly good, some wear may show on exam but this is unrelated to performance or pain. Pain is falsely ascribed to the arthritis or to the disc. Patients feel doomed, and are often told to give up activities. Pain (even the herniation itself) may mostly result from poor mechanics. This is no mystery. Change the bad habits to change the pain.
Sometimes, the scans show some major problem, and major surgery is performed to correct it. When the original problem was from the bad positioning, often pain persists or returns because you never corrected the mechanics that caused it. The defect itself may return from uncorrected mechanics. Surgery can be avoided. Fix the source of the problem and the results of the problem can heal, usually without surgery.
What To Do When You Hurt
- Your Physical Therapist will outline a home exercise program that will work best for you.
- Check what you are doing to injure structures and fix it: forward head, round shoulders, poor shock absorption when moving.
Don't Complain That It's Work
- Its free exercise.
- Its like learning any other new skill.
- It will fix your neck pain, free.
- It will take discipline.
How Long Does It Take To Fix Pain?
How long does it take to feel better? Using everything presented above, you should begin to feel the difference in as little as two weeks. It takes years to hurt a disc and only days for it to start healing once you no longer are injuring it. If you do not start to feel a little better within two weeks,check what you are doing compared to what you have learned above. Make sure there is not something else contributing to your pain. But it is is almost always quick and easy to start getting your life back and start feeling better right now.
Summary
Neck pain is not a mysterious "condition." People spend their day sitting, working, walking, and driving in terrible posture, hunching over the computer, lifting and bending wrong all day, walking heavily, and slouching all day, and then exercise in ways that strain and pressure discs and muscles. They make take exercise classes that are causing them more harm then good. They take anti-inflammatory medications for mechanical pain that is not inflammatory in nature, try remedies that do not address the cause of the problem, give up favorite activities, have surgery then return to previous injurious habits, then everyone is astonished that they "tried everything and nothing seemed to work." It's like eating butter and sugar all day, then waving your hands in the air for 5 minutes and saying "I don't understands why I don't lose weight, I do my exercises."
* Use healthy positioning to stop the cause of disc damage and discs can heal.
* Pain can be avoided by no longer damaging body structures with poor mechanics.
* It's simple - Dont memorize complicated rules. Just use muscles easily to reposition for daily life.
* Remove the bad mechanics causing damage and pain.
* Then no need for pills or surgery and the injury can heal.
* Postural mechanics is the same as brushing your teeth in the morning - a necessary health activity.
How is your body positioning right now? The whole point of exercise and therapy is missed when exercisers dont learn to consciously use their muscles the rest of the day for standing, sitting, bending, and shock absorption. Use your muscles to stand and bend properly for all daily tasks. Bonus: It burns calories, strengthens, and is a free workout.
You Dont Have To Live With Pain
Article adapted from: Dr. Jolie Bookspan
Director, Neck and Back Pain Sports Medicine, Philadelphia
