Chiropractic Neck Pain Relief Orange County

Dr. Barry Marks, Chiropractor
Orange, California

Have You Ever Felt Like You Just Couldn’t Hold Your Neck Up? Or Felt Like Screaming from Burning Aching in Your Neck as You Worked at Your Computer?

If you have, you’re not alone.

Neck Pain Is One of the Most Common Ailments Seen by Chiropractors

You might wonder, “why does my neck hurt so much?” First, please understand that your neck is filled with very sensitive nerves. When irritated they signal pain to your brain. Secondly, your neck is relatively small and weak compared to the weight of your head. It’s akin to balancing a bowling ball on a pencil! When the neck is functioning well, it can handle the stress, but when an imbalance occurs, it struggles.

What is Actually Causing My Neck Pain?

“I get a massage and it helps, but the next day it hurts again. If my problem is in the muscles why doesn’t a massage work?”

Actually, this is a very common question. The answer is, while your muscles being sore may be true, the actual underlying problem is probably not strictly a muscle issue. So get all the massages you want–they feel great! But they most likely won’t cure your neck pain.

Undoubtedly the number one cause of neck pain is a thing called the ‘facet joint.” Specifically, the facet joints are the thin joints towards the back of your spine. These joints guide movement and allow a very wide range of movement in the neck. Facet joints have different types of nerves in them as they are very important.

Mechanoreceptors are nerves that tell the brain what position a joint is in or how much load it is under.

When all is well, the mechanoreceptors send messages when you move or change positions. However, if the facet joints in the neck are malfunctioning or misaligned, the mechanoreceptors will start bombarding the brain with messages. And I mean bombard! Sensing this, the brain sends messages back to the surrounding muscles and tells them to tighten up (muscle spasm) to protect the joint.

You will feel this as muscle tightness and sometimes even full blown spasm or cramp. If you massage the muscles, they may relax a bit, but as long as the facet joints are not working correctly they will send messages to the brain to cause more spasm.

Therefore, the Key to Neck (and Back) Pain is then Correcting the Facet Joints

Until the facet mechanoreceptors feel that everything is ok, they will continue to cause spasm. So how can the mechanoreceptors be turned off or quieted down? I thought you’d never ask!

The facet joint is designed to move in complex directions. If something happens to cause the joint to lose mobility like sleeping too soundly off your pillow, or spending too much time with your head in a bad posture like staring at your phone or computer, or painting a ceiling or lying under a car or sink to repair something, the facet joints may become “stuck” in a certain range of motion. Not completely, but just a small arc of movement may be affected. This is enough to cause the mechanoreceptors to fire.

Here is Where Chiropractic Comes into the Picture

No doubt you have heard of “chiropractic adjustments?’ (Cracking? not a favorite term for professionals with 8 years plus of medical-chiropractic training) Did you know the “cracking” or “popping” sound is actually gas being released from the FACET Joints? Yes. Indeed, chiropractic adjustments move the joints through their full natural range of motion. When that happens, carbon dioxide gas is released much like popping a champagne cork.

“So, get cracked once and then the mechanoreceptors turn off and all is well, right?”

Not exactly. Immediately upon moving the facet joint, a surge of electrical impulses are sent to the brain from the mechanoreceptors and other nerves. If the misalignment of the facet had been very short lived, then yes, one adjustment might fix it. But the problem is most misalignments have lingered for a while because people aren’t aware of it or they wait it out for weeks or months thinking it will go away.

In that case, it can take several adjustments. Here’s why. After an adjustment your neck may feel better and spasm calms down. But, your brain and muscles still “remember” the misalignment. It has become embedded in the nervous system. It’s like your computer or phone brining you back to the same webpage over and over. You need to clear the memory to get to a new version of a webpage.

The brain and muscles are the same. They have to be reset.

One adjustment might last a day or so, but then the muscles clamp down again. A second adjustment a day or two later might last a bit longer. A third or fourth in a short span lasts even longer. Finally at some point the brain and muscles say “ok, we get it, the facet is working ok and we don’t need spasms any longer.’

The number of visits is completely variable depending on how bad the misalignment was, if there are complicating factors like arthritis in the facet joint (yes that is super common!) or if you continue to aggravate the joints with physical activity or postural stress.

How far apart your adjustments are matters. A ton!

In fact, this is one of the most misunderstood concepts patients have about chiropractic. The frequency of visits is more important than the total number. For example, let’s say you over did it gardening and woke up with a very stiff and sore neck. You can’t turn very well in one direction. Your chiropractor says you need to be seen 3x a week for a week then x a week for a week. That’s 5 treatments in weeks. In many cases, at the end of weeks your neck will feel considerably better.

However let’s say you decide I only want to be treated once a week. So you get adjusted and a week later you feel about the same and get another adjustment and guess what, the next week you feel not much better. And then maybe by week 6 of weekly adjustments you say well I feel somewhat better but not quite normal yet.

Your brain and muscles need to be told multiple times in short duration that the facets are ok. Only then will the cycle of muscle memory be broken.

Chiropractic Treatment for Neck Pain Relief

Chiropractic treatments are very safe for neck pain with lower side-effects than taking over the counter pain relievers. Treatment by chiropractors is also very effective as evidenced by numerous clinical studies.

Dr. Barry Marks is a chiropractor in Orange County with over 36 years experience treating neck pain. He will take the time to talk with you about your condition. Dr. Marks will do a thorough exam and then explain your condition in terms you can understand. Then he will present you with different treatment options. You will then be free to choose the plan that seems right for you.

Chiropractic Neck Pain Relief Orange County