The most often used treatment for neck pain, back pain, musculo-skeletal pain in the United States is actually Advil or Ibuprofen.I want to talk to you today a little bit about an alternative to Advil for neck pain, back pain, and musculo-skeletal aches and pains. Advil is never going to fix the problem because no one has ever had, in the history of mankind, an Advil deficiency. Taking Advil for neck pain is not going to fix the neck pain, it just masks it and covers it up, so you don’t actually know that there’s a problem there, even though the problem still exists. 

A matter of fact, if you look at one of the many, many side effects of Advil, is neck pain, unexplained neck pain based off of WebMD. Taking Advil can sometimes actually create the problem you’re trying to treat. If it does anything, it’s just going temporarily cover it up, but it’s still there. 

Where does neck pain actually come from, if not an Advil deficiency? Well, we have found that, in 25 years’ experience, is if one of the bones in the upper part of the neck gets a little bit out of its normal position then it changes the position of the head, because your head sits on top of those bones. Anywhere those bones go the head pretty much has to go with them. Your brain’s designed to be level always, so if one of the bones got a little bit misaligned, and how that happens is typically some sort of a trauma, and it could have been many years ago, a slip, a fall, an accident, like a car accident, sports injuries. Anything that just takes a little bit of a jolt to the body is enough to actually move one of those bones a little bit out of position. 

Then, as the body compensates for that misalignment the muscles on one side have to stretch while the muscles on the other side contract, because your body has to stay balanced. If your body leans a little bit then that means one side’s going to pull, the other side’s going to shrink, and then overtime, with gravity pushing down, that asymmetry starts to create discomfort. One side’s working harder than the other side, so many times it’ll go down into the upper back, the trap muscles across the shoulders, because these muscles are also working hard just trying to hold that head and keep it supported. 

What we have found is if we find the misalignment in the upper part of the neck, then if we can correct that, then that balances the brain back over the body, creates that symmetry again so the body is more balanced instead of trying to get balanced, and then the muscles start to relax. As they start to relax, pain goes away. Rather than taking an Advil, a very unnatural approach, try a more natural approach, something that doesn’t put anything into the body, something that has zero side effects. There are no negative side effects from keeping your body aligned, only positive ones. Try to find an upper cervical chiropractor. 

Upper cervical doctors focus all of our attention on keeping the head over the body and keeping the body perfectly balanced. As long as there’s perfect balance within the body there’ll be perfect symmetry. As long as there’s perfect symmetry then the muscles won’t be antagonistic, fighting against each other trying to keep the body level.