CHRONIC NECK PAIN & HEADACHES?
THE FIRST STEP TO FINDING A SOLUTION IS RESTORING RANGE OF MOTION
“A personal frustration as a clinician and researcher in the field is that the incidence of full recovery following a whiplash injury as a result of a motor vehicle crash has not increased and, subsequently, the rate of transition to chronic neck pain has not lessened. Management of whiplash, especially the challenge of lessening the rate of transition to chronicity, has yet to be achieved…..”From this month’s issue of The Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy (Whiplash Continues its Challenge)
I can’t begin to tell you how important Range of Motion (ROM) of the cervical spine (neck) is — particularly when it comes to one’s ability to go into EXTENSION (it’s the most important ROM in the body). What’s simply amazing to me is how many of the people I treat have been to any number of practitioners, including CHIROPRACTORS, THERAPISTS, and a wide array of PHYSICIANS, with little or nothing to show besides short-term results. Why? Besides the fact that doctors are doing little else than prescribing dangerous and useless drugs, much of the time the others on this list are putting the cart in front of the horse.
For instance, the normal ROM of cervical rotation (think nodding your head “no” here) would be about 90 degrees. This means that not only should you be able to get your nose over your shoulder with little or no effort, when you get it there, there should be little or no play. In other words, you can’t make your nose go any further. The amount of people who come to me who have had incredible numbers of treatments mentioned above, but who still have poor range of motion, is astounding (HERE are some examples). And the crazy part is, when I test these patients by asking them to turn their head right or left without turning their body, even though ROM is often in the 50-70% range, the patients often feel like it’s normal.
What all this means is that while a wide number of non-drug therapies might provide relief to these patients, if they are not restoring ROM, short-term relief is all they’ll get. As long as you don’t have an occult (hidden) driver of INFLAMMATION (YEAST, MOLD, OTHER DYSBIOSIS, MERCURY & ALUMINUM, GLUTEN or DAIRY intolerance, PARASITES, CONNECTIVE TISSUE AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE, THYROID PROBLEMS, etc, etc, etc), the first step in solving CHRONIC NECK PAIN (HEADACHES are often included here as well) needs to be checking for the ‘tethering’ effects of SCAR TISSUE.
Once Scar Tissue and FASCIAL ADHESIONS have been dealt with, adjustment(s) will actually do what they are supposed to do. From there, you can begin to deal with the FORWARD HEAD POSTURE — usually on your own. And for those of you who have been told that you can never get better because your problem is mostly related to degenerative or osteo-arthritis, you really need to read THIS SHORT POST. For those of you who feel you are probably living somewhere in the previous paragraph, THERE IS HOPE FOR YOU as well. It will just take a bit of time and discipline. HERE are some of our video testimonials; many concerning people just like you.
