Neck Pain Support Blog

Pinched Nerve in my Neck: HELP!

Patient: Doc, I think I have a pinched nerve in my neck. I don’t have neck pain, but my arm is tingling and it feels like my hand keeps going to sleep.

Doctor B: It may be a pinched nerve, do you recall straining your neck or upper back recently?

Patient: Well, I think I was sleeping in a strange position last night. I know because I woke up in the middle of the night because my hand was numb.

Doctor B: Sounds like you strained something which is putting pressure on some nerves. This can cause pain, numbness, weakness, even burning; it all depends on which fibers in the nerve root we are putting pressure on. Also, nerves communicate to our blood vessels as well, so pressure can interfere with adequate blood flow.

Patient: What can I do to get rid of my neck problem?

Doctor B: Sleep with the cervical traction neck pillow- this will help keep you in a good position and help correct your neck posture.

Right now, try using some neck traction, like the TracCollar, which will stretch out the neck, opening up the holes on the side of the vertebrae where nerve roots exit off of the spinal cord. Here is Dr. B showing how to use the neck traction collar:




Additional Reading Resources

• What is the Best Pillow for A Pinched Nerve in the Neck?
• The Most Common Disc Herniation in the Neck: C6
• DID YOU KNOW… “Hand And Arm Pain can be coming from your neck!”
• Neck Traction
• Neck Exercises

Taking too many medications ? Is this the culprit of your headaches?

A Headache comes on… its pounding right on top of your left eye and you are seeing stars. Furthermore you cannot do anything else but think about this headache. It is so debilitating that you have to stop what you are doing, and lay down in a dark room. Most people in this case, would pop a headache medication. Its simple, fast, cost effective and sometimes it works like magic!

A problem arises when one gets into this repetitive cycle of popping pills to cure headaches. According to Dr.Stewart Tepper of the Cleveland Clinic, one can be diagnosed with a condition called medication overuse headache .

Once patients experience 15 or more headache days per month, ''they don't respond very well to the medications to treat migraine anymore,'' according to Dr. Stewart J. Tepper, director of research at the Center for Headache and Pain in the Neurological Institute at the Cleveland Clinic.

''If a person starts out with migraine, then there's an interplay between the number of headache days they have per month and the number of days they treat with medication to treat their migraines and the likelihood they will end up with daily headaches,'' said Tepper, who is also a professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.

''Depending on the acute medications, a person can really accelerate the process.''

Studies found that patients who take drugs with an active ingredient called butalbital five days or more per month for more than three months can develop daily headache, Tepper said.

Daily headache can develop with routine use of opioids such as codeine or Vicodin on only eight days a month.

Dr. Tepper also warns about other types of headache medications such as over the counter medications such as Excedrin, Aleve and Advil. He stated that these patients can develop a daily headache when they use the drugs 15 days or more a month for more than three months.

At that point, he said, patients need to be weaned off the medications and placed on a preventive treatment.

But the best strategy is to avoid medication overuse headache by seeing a specialist before medication use reaches critical levels, Tepper said.

''The most important thing is that this is avoidable,'' he said.

He recommends patients keep a diary to track how often headaches occur and possible triggers.

What are other things that one can do to prevent taking these serious headache medications?

• Get a chiropractic adjustment. Misalignments in the neck can be cause for headaches
• Try acupuncture
• Use a headache ice pillow- this type of neck pillow is u shaped an gives the needed support in your neck with cold therapy for treating muscle spasms
• Work on the muscle spasms in the upper neck such as the subocciptal musculature and also in the upper back such as the upper trapezius muscle. Try the healthy neck system for treating the tender trigger points in neck spine. The healthy neck has 5 special contact points for your neck that you can use to decrease tension and reduce painful trigger points
• Make sure you are using a supportive cervical pillow at night.
• The Right Pillow for Headaches

Additional Reading Resources

• Effective Treatment for Cluster Headaches: Using Oxygen Therapy
• The Right Pillow for Headaches
• Headache Remedies- Headache Pain Relief Products
• The Real Cost of Headaches- Lost time from work, family and fun
• Supportive Neck Pillow- Linear Gravity Pillow

Meditation can Aid in Pain Relief, Study Shows

At the neck pain support blog, we talk about neck pain relief and the many ways to obtain pain relief naturally. Well here is another one, and its proven by a new study: Meditation.

A new British study has shown that People who routinely practice meditation may be better able to deal with pain because their brains are less focused on anticipating pain.

It has been shown that approximately 40% of people who suffer from chronic pain are not able to manage it. This study was an analysis involving people who practice a variety of meditation formats, and experience with meditation as a whole ranged from just a few months to several decades.

Only those individuals who had engaged in a long-term commitment to meditation were found to have gained an advantage with respect to pain relative to non-meditators.

"Meditation is becoming increasingly popular as a way to treat chronic illness such as the pain caused by arthritis," study author Dr. Christopher Brown, from the University of Manchester's School of Translational Medicine, said in a university news release.

He further noted that a"a mental health charity called for meditation to be routinely available on the NHS (National Health Service of Great Britain) to treat depression, which occurs in up to 50% of people with chronic pain. However, scientists have only just started to look into how meditation might reduce the emotional impact of pain."

All the forms of meditation that Brown looked at included mindfulness meditation practices, which form the basis of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which has been recommended for recurrent depression since 2004.

The researches used a laser to induce pain. They found that activity in certain parts of the brain seemed to decrease when the study participants anticipated pain. With that observation he was able to establish that those with upwards of 35 years of meditation under their belt anticipated pain the least.

In particular, meditators also seemed to display unusual activity in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain that is known for regulating attention and thought processes when a person feels threatened.

"The results of the study confirm how we suspected meditation might affect the brain," explained Brown. "Meditation trains the brain to be more present-focused and therefore to spend less time anticipating future negative events. This may be why meditation is effective at reducing the recurrence of depression, which makes chronic pain considerably worse."

However, he added that "although we found that meditators anticipate pain less and find pain less unpleasant, it's not clear precisely how meditation changes brain function over time to produce these effects."

Source: Brain scans show how meditation calms pain

Additional Reading Resources

• Studies about Neck Pain
• Combining Glucosamine and Omega-3 Fatty Acids to decrease pain and stiffness from Arthritis
• Walk Your Pains Away
• Study shows that Chronic Neck Pain Can Cause Respiratory Problems
• Study shows that Cold Laser Therapy helps Chronic Neck Pain Sufferers

Combining Glucosamine and Omega-3 Fatty Acids to decrease pain and stiffness from Arthritis

Osteoarthritis is basically a combination of the wearing of the cartilage and synovial fluid in between bones that make up a joint… and… inflammation.

Glucosamine is one of the building blocks of cartilage and synovial fluid and can help maintain and boost cartilage repair.

Omega-3 fatty acids help reduce inflammation. Fish oil has been shown to reduce inflammation associated with cardiovascular disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

Now, for the first time, a study has shown combining the two can reduce the pain and stiffness associated with osteoarthritis.

German researchers combined 1,500 mg of glucosamine sulfate with 200 mg of omega-3 fats.

Head researcher Joerg Gruenwald, Ph.D. said, “Omega-3 fatty acids inhibit the inflammation process in OA, whereas glucosamine sulfate further supports the rebuilding of lost cartilage substance.”

Additional Reading

• Remedy for A Stiff Neck
• Exercises for the Neck
• Fish Oil May be Better Than Drugs for Preventing Heart Failure
• How to End Neck Pain By Doing Cervical Traction At Home
• Neck Pillows | Neck Traction | Headache Relief

The Posture Pump helps take Pressure off of Joints and Restores the Cervical Curve

The normal cervical curve or cervical lordosis is approximately 43 degrees. I say approximately because it can be anywhere from 40-60 degrees to function at its best. Any loss of the curve will increase the pressure gravity puts downward on the head. This will lead to breakdown and cervical degeneration which in turn often creates neck pain and loss of neck motion.

A study from Practical Pain Management showed the effects of the posture pump neck traction to be superior to linear traction. What this means is that tractioning with the posture pump is more successful at restoring the neck curve than straight axial traction. This is analogous to someone pulling your head straight up, where as the posture pump traction you have a stretch but also a lobe that pumps up under the neck to restore the curve.

Additional Reading

• Information on the Cervical Traction Posture Pump 1000
• How to End Neck Pain by Doing a Cervical Traction Program at Home
• I Don’t Have Neck Pain, But My Arm And Hand Go To Sleep All The Time!
• Neck Posture
• Exercises for the Neck

Source: Restoration of Normal Cervical Lordosis by C. Norman Shealy, MD, PhD