Neck pain is among the most common body aches that many people complain about. This is because the neck area holds delicate structures such as the muscles, vertebrae, and nerves. Many people attempt to ignore neck pain, which causes it to progress and develop into a chronic medical condition. Standard protocol for treatment must be employed to address neck pain.
Neck Pain can be caused by mechanical factors such as strains or sprains in ligament, muscles and bones around the neck area are among its most common causes. The inflamed joints or facet joints between the vertebrae adds up to the pain especially during movement, thus resulting in pain.
It is estimated that two out of three people will suffer from neck pain at some point in their lives. This type of pain is often very difficult to treat because of its lack of specific underlying disease. It is also considered a major public health problem because of it has become a significant cause of disability around the world. Neck pain negatively impacts worker productivity and quality of life.
Generally, neck pain occurs as an acute condition that resolves within a month with just rest and minimal intervention. However, there are also some who develop chronic, recurrent pain episodes that require further treatment. Severe neck pain may even progress and affect other body parts such as referral pain and numbness in the arm.
Massage Therapy with different advanced modalities to assist and reduce muscular tension in the neck, including the use of physical stimuli such as cold, heat, light and electricity to relive neck pain. Heat and cold compresses can provide effective pain relief especially for muscle tension. Laser therapy and electrotherapy applies low-level laser and electrical impulses, respectively, to the affected muscles for relieve neck pain.
Microcurrent Point Stimulation (MPS) combines acupuncture and microcurrent in treating chronic pain.
Trauma refers to external physical harm to the body. Severity of trauma depends on the nature and source of injury and part of the body affected. Trauma can be classified on the basis of cause, modality, location and activity. Trauma may end up with scars, adhesions, repetitive strain, acute or chronic pain, inflammation, soft tissue injury and broken bones. Sometimes, excessive bleeding leads to shock and then death. Scars, adhesions and chronic pain may last long to affect the quality of life.
Scar: Scar is a fibrous tissue that results from natural healing process after injury. The process of scarring replaces normal skin with a kind of protein called “collagen” and connective tissue. All injuries to the body result in scarring except minor or superficial bruises or cuts. Scars may be hypertrophic, atrophic and in the form of stretch marks. Keloid is a serious type of hypertrophic scar.
Adhesion: Adhesion is a fibrous band that abnormally connects two surfaces of the body and often results from trauma, surgery, burn or radiation. Adhesions restrict normal movements, affect the posture and disturb the normal growth of the body organs.
Repetitive strain: Repetitive strain refers to pain or stress in a part of the body due to multiple or repetitive tasks.
Inflammation: Inflammation is a protective response of the body to eliminate the initial injury and to discard the damaged parts. It presents as pain, swelling, redness, heat and loss of function of the affected part of the body. Inflammation is of two types: acute and chronic. Acute inflammation may end up with resolution, fibrosis, abscess formation and chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation leads to chronic ulcers and tissue destruction.
Soft tissue injury: It refers to the injury to soft tissues like muscles, tendons and ligaments. Such injuries usually result from sprain, strain or overuse of a part of the body and result in pain swelling and reduced function.
Adhesions develop when two bodily structures come across and connect to each other while normally they are not attached. The causes of adhesion development include surgery, trauma, radiations, abdominal or pelvic infections and sometimes congenital bands. The injured or traumatic sites involve healing process which may also cause sticking of adjusted structures with healing chemicals along with the healing of normal tissues.
How do adhesions develop? During healing process after surgery, trauma or radiation injuries fibrin deposits on to the injured tissues. This deposited fibrin causes the nearby tissues or organs to adhere to each other. In other words, fibrin works as a bridge between the two or more structures at the site of healed points. Naturally, human body is equipped with certain enzymes which dissolve the extra fibrin and prevent these adhesions. So, the adhesions develop when these enzymes are under-produced or damaged due to injury or radiations, leaving the fibrin to continue to deposit and bind the structures to each other.
Adhesive capsulitis: In this condition adhesions develop between the joint surfaces, leading to pain and hampered movements of the joint, e.g. shoulder joint capsulitis.
Abdominal and pelvic adhesions: In this case, adhesions develop between the internal organs like intestines and reproductive organs, leading to chronic pain, obstruction or reproductive problems in females.
Pericardial adhesions: These adhesions develop after heart surgery and bind adjacent structures like heart and sternum to each other, causing pain and risks for second surgery.
Peritendinous adhesions: These adhesions affect tendons and their sheaths, leading to compromised movements of the digits.
Peridural adhesions: Such adhesions refer to the adhesions affecting the spaces surrounding the spinal cord. After spinal surgery, bands develop in the peridural spaces leading to tethering and chronic spinal pain.