Feeling neck pain, shoulder and even arm pain, with soreness, stiffness, restricted range of movement, shoulders feeling heavy? Stress levels go up to the roof and every thing just seems so hard to accomplish when you neck, shoulder and upper back muscles accumulate trigger points and refer pain to the head causing nasty tension headaches. Why does this happen to me? What can I do to minimize this from happening again? These are very common questions and reasons that make our patients show up at our door. When you get a stiff neck, you are also probably sore and have difficulty turning your head from one side to the other. Shoulder checks become full body movements. These symptoms last sometimes only a couple of days, but sometimes a few weeks depending on its severity. And yes, sometimes some of theses cases require medical attention but for the most part the stiffness or pain heal quickly due to the durability and recuperative nature of the cervical spine. What’s great is there are many ways to manage your neck and/or to avoid stiffness and pain. The muscles in the back of you head are part of the posterior postural fascial chain responsible for keeping you up right. One of these muscles is the Levator Scapulae, which is often responsible for your stiff neck. It attaches from the upper cervical vertebrae to the superior angle of the scapula (shoulder blade). When the Levator Scapulae contracts it elevates the scapula (in other words elevates the shoulder) towards your ears, now, when this muscle is tight and the scapula fixed, the movement orientation changes and its now your head that’s being pulled down towards the scapula limiting your normal range of movement. This muscle can get strained throughout the course of many activities of daily living: § Sleeping in a position that strains the neck muscles. Whenever you sleep on your back with a pillow it keeps your head out of alignment with your spine causing an elongation of the muscles in the back of the neck and a shortening of the muscles in the front. Now if you sleep on your side, I wouldn’t recommend you to sleep without any pillow at all, why? For the same reason, your head again would be out of alignment and the muscles on the side close to the bed are adaptively getting shorter while the muscles on the opposite site are compensating by getting longer. Can you imagine keeping those positions for 6 to 8 hours when sleeping? Yeah, not good. § Sport injuries. Any activity that involves repeatedly turning the head from side to side, like swimming. Impact from sports, such as in football or hockey. Some hits in football or hockey are so hard athletes suffer from whiplash or concussions afterwards. After the inflammatory response of these injuries the scar tissue and adhesions start to lay down in the affected muscles. Weight training with poor posture and any deviation in the cervical spine. If you train your shoulders in front of the mirror, I would caution you to lift facing the mirrior. If you are standing sideways it doesn’t take much to strain a muscle of the neck when forcefully contracting it while turning the head to one side. The funny part is that you could definitely feel it as it happens, but leave the gym totally unaware of the twitch since the muscles are warmed up, then later that day or the next day… oh my neck hurts… it doest make any sense, I don’t remember doing anything to cause this… hmm § Poor posture, too much time spent in an awkward positions, slouching while viewing the computer monitor, hunched over a steering wheel while driving, checking your cell-phone. People spend hours just texting or reading on their smart phones, allowing the head and neck to move forwards and down, which causes tremendous amounts of stress on the back of the neck by these muscles. The posterior muscles have to work harder and harder in an attempt to hold your head in neutral position. Please don’t hold your phone between your neck and your shoulder; you are just asking for injury and trigger point formation. Also, holding a purse on one side, that forces you to shrug the shoulder to avoid the purse strap from falling off. If you maintain this position for a very long period of time, the muscles that connect the neck to the shoulder, which cause the shoulder hiking, can become fatigued and go into spasm. Same thing happens when carrying a heavy suitcase or heavy objects on one side. § Excessive stress. Stress is defined as the body’s non-specific response to any demand made upon it (Selye, 1974). Stress is not a disease but it can contribute to ill health. Whether you notice it or not, when you are stressed, your shoulders raise up and depending on the stressor and the time you hold that position, you accumulate tension in the muscles limiting the amount of blood and nerve supply to the cells and tissues of that area. This means less oxygen and nutrients to be used for normal metabolism and the accumulation of lactic acid and other cellular waste, which in turn leads to trigger points forming that can cause nasty tension headaches. § Cervical spine disorders. Some cases are more complicated. In some circumstances the facet joints, the small joints of the spine which allow for free motion of the spine itself can get stuck, sometimes because of the capsule, sometimes because of an spasmodic contraction of the small muscles that move it and stabilize the spine for other movements to take place. Depending on the severity, these situations can cause irritation of the nerve roots causing pain, numbness, tingling or weakness of the neck, shoulders and/or the arms. These are more serious conditions and should be evaluated by a heath care practitioner. Active Release Techniques has proven to be very efficient in both, assessing and resolving the problem. When considering treatment, the first thing to do is control your breathing, under painful or stressful circumstances, breathing becomes more apical and shallow as the body attempts to increase oxygen intake. Relaxed deep breathing combined with meditation has proven to reduce stress. To stretch the Levator Scapulae muscles, try lying on your back and keep your neck elongated (lying allows for your muscles to relax since they don’t have to worry about keeping your head in position). Let’s say you are stretching your left side, reach with your left arm towards your feet and place your left hand under your body to anchor your left shoulder. Then turn your head to the right as far as it goes pain free, and tuck your chin in as far as possible, again, pain free. Now is a great time to use your controlled breathing – breath in and out at a gentle relaxed pace allowing for your exhalation to take two times as long as your inhalation. Repeat six to seven times. Stretch the other side for balance; and repeat the whole process three times. After a couple days you won’t have to repeat it that many times, once a day preformed properly should be suffice. In many cases, depending on the severity of your neck injury, your body lays down scar tissue (at cellular/tissue level we would call it adhesions) between the muscle fibers restricting movement and limiting relative sliding of the muscles in relation to adjacent structures. At Avalon Massage Therapy we use Active Release Techniques to break down the scar tissue and adhesions formations or release entrapped nerves from adhered structures, using active movement from the patients, which allows us to create opposite relative movement among soft tissues. More importantly we provide you with an assessment to spot the related tight or dysfunctional structures that cause or aggravate the pain and stiffness. Trigger Points in the Levator Scapulae for example, refers pain to the base of the neck and over the scapula, as well as the medial border of it. Patients explain they feel pain or discomfort that runs down the back along the medial border. Yes we definitely treat the Trigger Point, that’s what causes the horrendous pain. Yet, the release won’t last long if we don’t also address the cause of the Trigger Point, which is often due to rounded forward shoulders and forward neck posture. Hence we will also treat your anterior chest and neck musculature responsible for keeping your shoulders in poor postural positions. Know anyone that could benefit from this information? Have a great day! Your team at Avalon Massage Therapy avalonrmt
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 14:11:27 +0000
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