Hey what’s up everyone? Dr. Hunter Merriman here, your chiropractor for neck pain in Bradenton, FL. Today I want to talk to you about things you can do, stretches you can do, to decrease pain in the neck.
And one thing people need to know is that the spine is meant to move. Especially the cervical spine, the neck. It has the most dynamic ranges of motion out of the entire spine. And when it doesn’t move, the joints get irritated, the muscles tighten down, and they need to be stretched. And the spine needs to have movement. Okay.
Now it’s not rocket science, okay. The cervical spine, we have rotation, left and right. We have lateral bending. You know, ear to shoulder, left and right. We have flexion, we have cervical extension, okay. And then we have everything in between.
Neck Pain Causes | Bradenton, FL Chiropractic
Okay. So the idea is just to take your spine, your neck or cervical spine, through all those ranges of motion, every single day. And ideally throughout the day. Okay. Now, for a lot of us when we’re sitting at a computer, our neck is not moving. It’s just sitting here. And that isn’t just sitting here, but lots of times it’s sitting and starts falling forward.
When that happens, that creates a lot of stress on the neck muscles in the back. That’s when you get headaches. And that gets stiff. There’s a specific muscle group called splenius services. They run off the cervical spine and they attach right in between the shoulders.
So if you have pain in between the shoulders, there’s a good chance it’s coming from the neck. Because of this forward neck posture you have all the time. Okay. So throughout the day, we just want to take our neck through all of its ranges of motion. Take a few minutes, turn left, turn right, ear to shoulder. Hold it for a couple seconds. Okay.
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You can take it to the next level. Grab a hold and give a little pull and just hold it for a little bit. 10 seconds and then release. Same thing on the other side, and then release. With the rotation, touch your chin just give it a little push, just a little extra. Left and right. Go ahead and do some circular movements, okay? And then the opposite direction as well.
Alright now the big one. As I mentioned before, because we’re sitting like this a lot. We need to do the opposite. Okay. This is cervical flexion. As a society, we’re down there way too often. We’re on our cell phones or on the computer or reading or cooking whatever. We need to spend some time in extension, in the opposite direction.
Because cervical extension puts the curve back into the neck. It takes the stress off those muscles that we were talking about. Okay. All you have to do is just take a little bit of time and extend your head and just decompress for a few moments. And feels amazing. Okay.
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And another thing you need to know. The joints in the spine, if not taken through their full ranges of motion frequently, that’s when arthritis sets in. That’s when adhesions build up. Okay? And that’s where I come in. As a chiropractor, my job is to identify these areas of restriction in the spine and reestablish motion with the spinal adjustments.
Okay, so again, left and right rotation, lateral bending, flexion extension, and you’ll be good to go. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please hit LIKE share, subscribe, comment below and we’ll see you on the next one. Take care.
