It’s so frustrating when your neck pain goes away for a while, and then comes back just when you thought it was finally gone for good. You get a few days’ relief, or pop a few ibuprofen, and it feels fine for a couple of weeks.
Then one morning you wake up, and there it is again – that same old ache or stiffness that makes turning your head feel like too much work.Most people assume they just slept funny or did something at work (and they’re probably right).
But when neck pain keeps coming back, there’s usually another reason. The relief that you get from resting or popping an occasional over-the-counter pain reliever isn’t treating the root of the problem – it’s just covering up the symptoms, while the real issue lies in wait for an opportunity to flare up again.
Your Body Finds Workarounds That Create New Problems
Here’s what happens when your neck hurts: your body starts protecting itself. You might not even notice that you’re doing it, but you begin to move differently.
Instead of turning your neck, you start turning your whole upper body. You hold your head at an awkward angle while reading or working. You favor one side of your body when you lift an object.
These compensations feel “right” at the time because your body is trying to avoid the pain. The trouble is, these newly-developed patterns of movement stress the muscles and joints that weren’t used to doing that kind of work before, and now they have to pick up the slack.
Your shoulders begin to get tight. Your mid-back starts to ache. You might even develop a tension headache as the muscles under the base of your skull tighten up and start working overtime.
When the initial episode of pain begins to settle down, most people just go back to doing what they’ve always done. But those compensatory movement patterns often remain, and the muscles that did the work during the acute (painful) phase become fatigued and irritated. After a few days or weeks, the cycle begins again.
The Original Problem Never Actually Got Fixed
Most people assume that when pain goes away, the original injury has healed. But here’s the thing: pain relief is not the same as healing.
When your body begins to heal after an initial inflammatory response, the nervous system calms down, and the area starts to get blood flow again. Things begin to start functioning again, “normally” so to speak.
But if there is a misalignment in your cervical spine, restricted joint motion, or even just a muscle imbalance that’s causing some of your vertebrae to not be positioned quite right – then that original issue is still there.
Working with a chiropractor for neck pain addresses just that instead of leaving things up to chance and just waiting for symptoms to quiet down by themselves. Proper spinal manipulation restores motion to areas that need it, and when your vertebrae are once again moving the way they should be, then the muscles around them will also calm down and do their job as normal.
Think of it this way: if one wheel on your car is out of alignment, you might not notice it right away. Chances are you can drive around for quite a while without any major complaints.
Eventually though, that one wheel will wear unevenly, stress your car’s suspension system, and before you know it you’re dealing with a whole mess of problems instead of just one headache. Your spine is no different from your car in this regard. A small issue left undetected creates stress to other areas in the same system.
Daily Habits Keep Recreating the Same Damage
Even after the initial pain settles down, most people will go back to doing the same things that hurt their necks in the first place.
Spending eight hours a day hunched over in front of a computer doesn’t suddenly become okay for your neck just because it’s stopped hurting.
Staring down at your phone for hours on end recreates the same forward head posture that strained your neck to begin with. The weight of your head is about ten to twelve pounds when your neck is in a neutral position. For every inch your head moves forward from its resting position, you add about ten pounds of additional leverage that your neck muscles have to fight against.
That doesn’t sound like too much (and it isn’t if done occasionally), but if you’re constantly in that forward posture – whether working at a computer station, driving, or even just looking at your phone – you’re bound to wear those muscles out pretty quickly.
They develop trigger points. They compensate for you by pulling your vertebrae out of alignment. Eventually – one way or another – something has got to give.
This is where most people get stuck in a loop with their neck pain. The pain recurs, they rest until it feels better, and then they go right back to their desk set up or whatever else it was that caused the problem in the first place.
Old Injuries That Never Properly Healed
Occasionally, recurring neck pain can also be associated with an injury that happened months or even years ago. You may have had whiplash from a car accident, fell hard during a ski accident, or maybe even just experienced a mild sports injury when you were younger.
At the time, you probably felt some pain and stiffness, but eventually it seemed like you got better. But “getting better” doesn’t always mean “healed.” Soft tissue injuries often leave behind scar tissue that can limit movement for good.
Ligaments can stretch beyond their normal range and heal unevenly in ways that leave joints less stable than they once were.
What probably seemed like relatively small trauma in one section of your neck though, definitely may have shifted a few of your vertebrae out of their optimal position – even though your body adapted on its own to “make it work.”
These old injuries create weak spots in your neck that are easy to re-injure after relatively harmless events – like sleeping in a weird position or turning your head quickly instead of slowly.
Breaking the Cycle Takes Active Treatment
To break the cycle of recurring neck pain, all these factors need to be treated together. You need active rehabilitation where your neck is structurally restored and treated properly.
Compensatory movement patterns have to be re-trained so they can remember how to move properly again.
You also need to identify daily habits or postures that may be recreating (or compounding) the original issue.
Most important of all, you need to understand that just getting temporary relief from pain doesn’t mean anything has been fixed, so don’t just assume it’s going to be okay and throw away your old habits! When neck pain keeps coming back, there’s usually an underlying reason that needs to be addressed first.
