The secret to long to term neck pain.

Once in a while I see someone with neck pain or headaches and they are not fixed in four treatments or less.

I consider myself successful as a therapist when my patients do NOT require ongoing treatment.

 

My goal is always to provide a service that fully resolves your pain to the extent that you do not become ‘dependent’ on me as a therapist.

 

I have become so confident with this therapy that I expect to get lasting results in three or four treatments. With this rule of thumb, whenever I need to see someone more than three or four times for neck or head pain, I know that there is more to the problem.

Most neck and head pain is ‘myofascial’. That means it is referred from muscles and tendons in the neck. When these muscles and tendons are skilfully manipulated, the treatment will ‘cure’ your neck pain and headaches. You will be pain-free for at least months, if not years or even permanently.

But … if treatment only gives a few days’ relief repeatedly then there is more going on. Usually there is some kind of issue in one of the joints in the neck. In this case the joint issue is the trigger that is telling the muscles and tendons to keep referring pain. The solution? Correct the joint posture, allow the neck joints to settle and heal and then the muscle manipulation will relieve the pain and LAST!

Posture pole . . .

In this scenario I encourage patients to use a ‘posture pole’. A posture pole is just a semi-circular stick of foam that you lie on. You lie on it on your back with your head, back, bum – your whole spine – along it. You can use a long foam roller (900mm or more) in the same way. The magic of the posture pole is that when you lie on it with your knees bent and chin tucked in, it pushes your spine into an ideal spinal posture. It’s worth consulting a therapist just to make sure you are doing this correctly before you start doing it every day. When your spine is in this corrective position at rest, all sorts of good things happen. Ten minutes daily for 10 days is normally enough for the offending joint in the neck to settle right down, as such resolving the underlying trigger for the neck pain and headaches.

Once the joint irritation is resolved the muscles and tendons in the neck that were causing the neck pain and headaches respond much more permanently to the treatment, making the posture pole a great complement to therapy. A posture pole is an effective and affordable piece of equipment to use regularly as a preventative tool also.

 

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Wishing you the best of health!

– Tim