EFFECTIVE neck PAIN MANAGEMENT
THIS IS A KEY AREA IN OUR MANAGEMENT AT BODY LOGIC HEALTH. AS MOVEMENT SPECIALISTS, WE HAVE DEVELOPED A COMPLETE PHILOSOPHY TO TARGET YOUR NECK PAIN. HELPING YOU GET ON THE ROAD TO RECOVERY QUICKLY AND EFFECTIVELY.
Understanding the issue
As one of the most common musculoskeletal disorders, neck pain can significantly impact an individuals’ daily life and overall well-being. According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) it is estimated that up to 70% of people will experience neck pain at some point in their lives.
Neck pain is often caused by excessive load and stress placed on the soft tissues around the neck, generally as a result of habitually poor postures. These poor postures adopted during prolonged sitting or standing, along with poor & repetitive movements can contribute to the development of neck pain.
The majority of neck pain episodes, even when severe, tend to settle within a few weeks of the initial acute injury. However, episodes can become more frequent and long lasting. As such, it is crucial to intervene early and manage neck pain appropriately to alleviate symptoms, improve function, and prevent its progression into a chronic condition.
REMOVE YOUR PAIN
Your neck pain must be addressed first, it is important to be able to get on with your daily activities, and there are huge benefits to returning to normal activities. Your physiotherapist will complete a full assessment to understand the best way forwards for your condition.
You will then have your injury explained fully to you:
The reason for your symptoms and the full diagnosis.
The first step to ‘remove your pain’.
You will then begin the best treatment to help your recovery, and our highly skilled physiotherapists will give you the best outline of the time frame for this first step.
N.B.
If you have made it this far previously and find yourself in treatment again then there are a few key factors that you need to be aware of, as detailed below.
It is crucial to recognize that you should have the ability to perform a variety of movement patterns when carrying out a task, such as picking up a pencil from the floor. However, when you lose the ability to use different movements, it can lead to repetitive strain on your soft tissues, including muscles, ligaments, tendons, and joints. This is when issues are more likely to occur and cause problems
The key to identifying these movement faults lies in linking the dysfunction with the symptoms (Comerford & Mottram 2001). Identifying movement faults is fast becoming the accepted best practice for neuromusculoskeletal practice (Sharmann 2002), who went on to profess that;
“musculoskeletal pain syndromes are seldom caused by isolated events and that habitual movements and sustained postures play a major role in the development of movement dysfunction.”
Recurrence poses a significant challenge for most cases of neck pain. If you have only addressed the initial phase of pain management in the past, it is likely that you haven’t made any changes to how your neck moves to prevent strain and the return of problems in the future. This issue is particularly prevalent in the neck region due to prolonged periods spent sitting at a desk, among other factors. It is essential to establish lifelong habits and make necessary changes to prevent recurring neck issues.
The ability of our team to identify poor movement patterns, muscle imbalances, timing faults and related issues both above and below your back injury means the team are ideally placed to explain and address these factors to move you to a better long term result and allow you to spend more time doing the activities you enjoy.
BUILD YOUR FOUNDATION
Building your foundation is step two, to complete this phase we need to identify the underlying movement faults that you have. You have a couple of options here depending on your specific goals and your options can be fully discussed with your practitioner;
1. Movement Screen – a brilliant way to understand how you move which affects your tissue loading and can be easily related back to many of the reasons behind the injuries we see in clinic each and every day.
2. Pilates Discovery Session – can be an exciting option looking forward at your long term movement health, the Pilates assessment helping identify issues in your movement that can then be addressed through targeted Pilates sessions.
3. Rehabilitation Evaluation – your neck can be severly affected by habitual movement patterns. Understanding how you move and how you load your neck region can open the pathway options to improve patterning and create long term spinal health.
You will have ‘how you move’ identified and explained in full detail, and this will allow your movement specialist to plan the next phase of your recovery.
The main goal in building your foundation is to not only identify the underlying causative factors but explain why they are there so you can make lifestyle changes to help avoid recurrence. Then you can begin the movement retraining phase to improve how you move to change excessive loading and tissue stress building up again which can be exacerbate your neck issue.
ELEVATE YOUR PERFORMANCE
The hardest part for everyone is to stay motivated once you are feeling great and moving well again. We all know life gets in the way of looking after you. If you feel you need further help to achieve your performance goals or to maintain your lifestyle, there are ways we can help you.
If you have completed the first two steps, you are now ready to achieve lifestyle and performance goals, step 3. At this phase our great sports rehabilitation team will often take over your management.
There are plenty of options for you depending on your specific goals, so please discuss your options with your physiotherapist. This step will complete your neck pain solution, and will involve individually designed programmes to complement your home exercise programme.
This will help you create movement health and enjoy the life you want to live.
Don’t delay starting your neck pain pathway to help you return to your life without your current issue.
Start your journey today and enjoy your life again.
Ready to start your recovery?
Get in touch with us now
Have a question?
Wondering how we can help you? Give us a call and one of our expert team will be happy to answer all your questions!
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You can book your appointment online by clicking below. If you’d prefer to talk first you can call us on 020 7924 6068 or email battersea@body-logic.co.uk