How Physical and Occupational Therapy Can Help With Neck Pain
Up to 70 percent of adults will experience neck pain that affects their quality of life in their lifetime. Physical therapists are front-line providers for helping alleviate neck pain due to their extensive experience and education around solutions. Neck pain relief can be achieved by improving mobility, strength, flexibility, and proper movement patterns in the neck, upper back, and shoulders. Physical therapy and therapeutic exercise addresses the root cause and factors that caused neck pain to develop in the first place.
Recent research has shown that physical therapy is a better treatment for neck pain than pain medication or surgery. This is true with acute and chronic neck pain.
Common Causes Of Neck Pain
A variety of factors will cause neck pain. It may begin with an injury or trauma, like a car accident or a fall. Types of injuries include spinal fractures, ligament tears, and muscle strains. Any time someone falls on their neck and shoulders or is in a car accident, they should be evaluated for injury immediately by an Emergency Room or Urgent Care site. Unstable spinal fractures are severe and could cause permanent damage or injury to the spinal cord.
Neck pain also may develop gradually over time, such as with cases of arthritis and stenosis. Other generators of gradual, chronic pain are cervical radiculopathy and cervical spondylolysis. With these two conditions, there is a lack of space for the spinal nerves to exit the spine, causing pain and arm numbness. Often when the neck is painful, the surrounding muscles and joints of the neck, upper back, and shoulder also develop pain, stiffness, and poor movement patterns. This highlights the importance of resolving neck and related pain before it becomes a problem in other areas and resolving all related issues to the original neck pain.
Treatment & Exercises For Neck Pain
Your physical therapists will examine the root cause of your neck pain and any related factors, such as upper back stiffness. They will develop a treatment plan to include improving the mobility of stiff areas or improving the stability and function of overly mobile areas. The plan will also include education on posture and body mechanics with daily tasks, such as ergonomics in the workplace as they relate to neck pain. In addition, flexibility and strength exercises that strengthen the neck and shoulders in the appropriate patterns will be added. Your physical therapist will adjust things throughout your treatment plan to make them more or less difficult based on your progress.
How A Physical Therapist Can Help With Neck Pain
Physical therapy for neck pain is among the best ways to resolve neck pain for good. Physical therapists treat individuals with neck pain each day and have developed strategies that work in the long term to improve neck pain and all activities limited by it. This is true with stubborn chronic pain that has lasted even decades! Physical therapy takes a comprehensive strategy of adjusting poor movement patterns in daily life and improving the overall root causes of neck pain. This allows people with neck pain to take an active role in their recovery, and those that stick with physical therapy recommendations have the possibility of full symptom resolution.
