Neck Treatment
Neck pain is widespread.
Ever wonder the safety of treating the neck area?
We’ve got the facts!
Neck pain ranks in the top 5 disorders in the United States, with 10-20% of people reporting incidents of neck pain. If you’ve lived with neck pain, you know that it can affect your physical, mental, and social well-being! In general, the neck, aka the cervical spine, supports the weight of your head which on average is 12 pounds. The cervical spine is very mobile in general, but this mobility and flexibility makes it very susceptible to injury and pain.
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Neck pain can arise from a variety of factors, some including cervical dysfunction, strains/sprains, herniated discs, and arthritis. Some risk factors that can increase your chance of experiencing neck pain include poor ergonomics at work, repetitive movements, accidents, falls, and even normal aging or everyday wear and tear. Neck pain can even cause you to have different types of headaches.
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So what can we do? It depends on the root cause of your neck pain. It can be something as simple as some end-range repetitive movements, it can be functional rehab to get the muscles pulling on your neck and stabilizing your spine working correctly again, it can be soft tissue work or cupping therapy to release the tight muscles around the neck, it can be dry needling to stimulate the healing process, it can be a neck adjustment, OR it can be a combination of any or all of these things!! The video below exhibits everything that we do at Chiro CLE to address different neck complaints.
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However, today I want to address neck adjustments. Many people love them, and some people are scared to get them. Let’s talk about it! So a neck adjustment is applied to restricted segments of the neck. It can be performed by hand or even by using an instrument to assist. The adjustment restores range of motion in the spine that it was lacking prior, and it also increases mobility. Adjustments to the neck often reduce stiffness and pain.
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Now let’s talk about the safety of it! Every so often a news story will come out about a neck adjustment being correlated with a stroke. I am here to give you the facts according to the American Chiropractic Association (acatoday.org):
“Chiropractic services are some of the safest drug-free, noninvasive therapies available for the treatment of pain. Although chiropractic has an excellent safety record, no health treatment is completely free of potential adverse effects. The risks associated with chiropractic, however, are very small.
While some reports have associated high-velocity, upper-neck manipulation with a certain kind of stroke, or vertebral artery dissection, research suggests that patients are no more likely to suffer a stroke following a chiropractic neck treatment than they are after visiting their primary care medical doctor’s office. It was also concluded that vertebrobasilar artery (VBA) stroke is a very rare event, and that this type of arterial injury often takes place spontaneously or following everyday activities such as turning the head while driving, swimming or having a shampoo in a hair salon.
The best evidence indicates that the incidence of artery injuries associated with high-velocity, upper-neck manipulation is extremely rare – about 1 case in 5.85 million manipulations. To put this risk into perspective, if you drive more than a mile to get to your chiropractic appointment, you are at greater risk of serious injury from a car accident than from your chiropractic visit.
Cervical spine manipulation was associated with significant improvement in headache outcomes in trials involving patients with neck pain and/or neck dysfunction and headache.”
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Knowing all of this, I also want to address what we do at Chiro CLE before ever adjusting you! We always screen you on your initial visit and at subsequent visits to make sure you are not exhibiting any red flags. Through a whole series of questions, tests, and exams, I am able to gather info on whether you are going to be safe to adjust, whether I need to send out for further imaging or a second opinion before proceeding.
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But what if you just still don’t want your neck adjusted? That is quite alright. As you read above, there are plenty of other things I am able to do to treat your neck. Sometimes is a neck adjustment absolutely what you need to decrease your pain? Yes. But that also means that sometimes it’s not. I will be fully transparent with you, especially if you are nervous about getting a neck adjustment and are experiencing neck pain. Additionally, there are other “adjustments” that are very low force and gentle as compared to the typical high-velocity low amplitude (HVLA) ones you see in every chiropractic YouTube video ever! They all get the same job done. I demonstrate both types of cervical adjustments in the video below.
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I hope you came here and learned a lot about the safety of chiropractic treatments to the cervical spine! As always, please reach out to the office with any further questions you may have!
