Category Archives: Neck Pain

Cervical myelopathy is not only uncomfortable, but it can also cause more problems to arise if left untreated. Since cervical myelopathy is linked to health of your spinal cord, having a compressed or injured spinal cord can lead to other serious issues or conditions that can worsen over time.

What is Cervical Myelopathy Syndrome?

Cervical myelopathy is a result from a severe compression of the spinal cord. Cervical myelopathy is a disorder in which the severe compression of the spinal cord leads to spinal cord dysfunction.

Why Cervical Myelopathy Occurs

The changes of your bones, ligaments, and discs of the spine can all cause pressure on your spinal cord. These changes could be due to maturing over time, bone spurs, arthritis of the spine, or an accident that causes trauma on your spine.

Bone spurs are growths that add pressure to the spine and are normally caused by local inflammation or injury. Although they could place pressure on your spinal cord, bone spurs themselves may or may not cause any symptoms. 

Arthritis of the spine may be related to wear and tear, infection, autoimmune disorders, and other conditions. When you have spinal arthritis, the facet joints in the spine or sacroiliac joints between the spine and the pelvis become inflamed. 

Accidents that can cause trauma on your spine can vary from automobile accident to lifting too much weight. There are many things that can cause pressure on your spinal cord and if your spinal cord is not properly taken care of after an incident that caused it additional stress, it could lead to the development of cervical myelopathy.

Cervical Myelopathy Symptoms

Symptoms of cervical myelopathy occur over time and usually not right away. Because of the pressure put along your spinal cord, different nerves in the body can be affected and cause you to experience pain or discomfort throughout different places in your body. Some symptoms associated with cervical myelopathy include the following:

• Neck pain or stiffness
• Stiff fingers or legs
• Arm pain
• Numbness in hands
• Weakness of arms and legs
• Loss of bladder or bowel control
• Trouble using hands
• Difficulty walking

Can Chiropractic Offer Cervical Myelopathy Treatment?

An upper cervical chiropractic studies the upper cervical spine and the chain reaction a misalignment can cause in the upper cervical area. The upper cervical spine consists of two bones in your neck area, located right under the base of the skull. These are the two most important bones of the entire spine as they house your brain stem and cannot realign themselves on their own. If there is a misalignment in any of the top two bones, the rest of the spine follows – causing multiple misalignments to take place down your spine.

Your spine protects your spinal cord and misalignments will cause the vertebrae to pinch or cause pressure on the nerves they are protecting. These misalignments, occurring from trauma, aging, or injury, can cause spinal cord dysfunction which can lead to cervical myelopathy.

A chiropractor can help you fix these misalignments and allow your body to heal and repair the injuries caused by them.

Can a Neck Adjustment Help Cervical Myelopathy?

Believe it or not, a neck adjustment can do wonders for cervical myelopathy. Since the upper cervical spine is the top of the spine, any event that moves these top two bones out of place can cause the rest of the spine to follow their lead and move out of alignment.

A neck adjustment will not only realign your upper cervical spine, but it will influence the rest of the spine to follow them and correct itself.

Forward head posture, also referred to as poked beck, is when the position of your head is in front of the midline of your body. This causes a lot of physical issues due to the additional amount of pressure on the neck from having an abnormal posture. Forward head posture is also one of the most common causes of pain and tension in the head, neck, shoulders, and spine.

Having forward head posture will negatively affect your muscles, making them either long and weak or short and tight. Muscles that will become long and weakened by the forward head posture include:

• Erector Spinae – These muscles are attached to the back of your lower cervical spine and upper thoracic spine. They play a significant role in rotating and straightening your spine; however, when these muscles are made longer in length and weaken, they lose their ability to keep the neck and upper back from hunching forward.
• Deep Cervical Flexors – The deep cervical flexors also referred to as the longus capitus and longus colli, are along the front of your cervical spine. These muscles help stabilize your neck but if they become weak, they will lengthen while the chin begins to tilt away from the neck (this is called “chin poking”).
• Shoulder Blade Retractors – Your shoulder blade retractors (your middle trapezius and rhomboid muscles) help keep your shoulders back and chest open, allowing you to keep good posture. When these muscles are weakened, your shoulder blades will begin to move forward and contribute to the hunching shoulders and forward head posture.

When there is long-term forward head posture, this will cause muscles to become short and tight. Muscles that become short and tight include:

• Chest Muscles – When the muscles of the upper back lengthen as the shoulders round forward, the chest muscles could shorten and become tight – making it harder for you to keep good posture.
• Suboccipital Muscles – The suboccipital muscles are 4 pairs of small muscles. These are in the lower back of your skull and the top of your cervical spine (neck area). When you have a forward head posture, these muscles have to work even harder and constantly contract in order to keep the head up and looking straight.
• Levator Scapulae Muscles – Levator scapulae muscles are a pair of muscles that side along the back and sides of the neck. These muscles go from the mid-cervical spine down to your shoulder blades (the scapula). Their purpose is to lift your shoulder blades and to help with your neck movements. When you have a forward head posture, the shoulder blades begin tilting forward and will rotate up along with the rounded shoulders; this can cause your levator scapulae muscles to shorten.

Forward Head Posture Symptoms

Having a forward head posture can cause one or more of the following symptoms to occur:

• Tight Muscles – The pain and reduction in muscle functions can cause less mobility in your neck or cause your neck to become stiff. When you have tight muscles, they are inflamed and tight from either an injury, response to other inflammation near them, areas that trigger pain (trigger point pain), or from being overworked due to improper posture. 
• Pain – When your muscles are overworked, they can go into a spasm and create tight and severe pain. This pain is usually localized around the side of the neck or the base of the skull and can either feel sharp or sometimes like a burning sensation. Specific movements or positions can make this pain worse.
• Trigger Point Pain – Trigger point pain is a pain in the muscles that worsen when they are touched. This is common on the back of the person’s neck but could also be present on the shoulders or the head.
• Soreness – Soreness due to forward head posture can spread along the side or back of the person’s neck, the head, upper back, and shoulders. This is due to the areas being consistently overworked.

Can Upper Cervical Treat Forward Head Posture?

The upper cervical area of your spine is located just under the base of your skull. The upper cervical bones, the Atlas, and the Axis hold up your neck and provide the neck with mobility. When a misalignment in either of the two bones occurs, it changes your neck’s position and the muscles around it will begin to stretch, tighten, and weaken as they try to support your upper cervical area and level out the head position.

Poor posture can cause your upper cervical area to fall out of alignment and apply stress on the surrounding area.

During a misalignment, the brain stem is also affected. The bones compress the brain stem causing a disruption in the brain to body communication; this affects your nervous system and how your body processes and handles information it is given.

Because communication is no longer working as it should, the body’s ability to heal and repair itself decreases and continues to worsen over time. This makes it difficult for the body to repair muscles and tissue that is damaged due to the misalignment.

In order to correct forward head posture, the neck area needs to be aligned and your surrounding muscles need to be able to repair themselves to hold the correct position. The purpose of an upper cervical adjustment is to fix the misalignment in your upper cervical area and release the pressure off your brain stem.

When pressure is taken off your brain stem, proper signals and can be sent from the brain to the body and the healing process can begin. Each adjustment made is to help give your body the proper communication it needs to continue its healing and repairing process. Depending on the severity of the patient’s case, more adjustments may be needed. When the brain to body communication is open and no longer compressed, the muscles begin to relax and strengthen around the upper cervical bones to hold them in their proper place.

Patients have reported their pain and tension around the upper cervical area decreasing after the very first adjustment. As your body heals, the pain and tension continue to decrease until your muscles and posture improve their strength.

Since upper cervical treatments focus on the cause of forwarding head posture, your symptoms improve without medication and your posture improves naturally over time.

I often get asked, “What does a herniated disc in the neck feel like?” Well, most of the time there would be some discomfort in the neck, and then oftentimes there will be some sort of pain going down the neck into the shoulder, oftentimes into the arm, and into the hand. Let me show you what a normal healthy disc nerve relationship looks like. Here’s the vertebra here, and you have this disc in here which is a cartilage pad with a little gel nucleus, almost like a jelly donut. And it has these rings that go around, and this is the harder part. And then there’s this softer part here, and that softer part serves as a fulcrum around which the bone can move.

 Now what happens is if there’s a change in the shape of the spine, typically we’ll have a loss of curve in the neck or lower back, depending on where the disc is to herniate. And what that’ll do is it will change the dynamics of the disc and it’ll start to squish down. What will happen is that jelly donut, as if you were squeezing down on a jelly donut, that gel will start to bulge out or start to squirt out towards one side. And then, in that situation, what we get is a herniated disc or a disc bulge, where it actually bulges out the end of the disc where the nerves come out. That’s how it can create nerve pain which can go down the arm and to the hands. If it’s in the lower back, it’ll actually go down the leg. That’s where sciatica can come from, or other radicular-type symptoms down into the legs and the feet.

Most of the time when somebody has a herniated disc, whether it be in the neck or in the back, a lot of times there’s neck pain or back pain associated, not always, but most of the time there is. But usually if it is herniated enough to where it bulges to the point, it can affect the nerves going down the arms and down the legs. If you’ve ever had any kind of numbness, tingling, pain in the arms, in the hands, or down the legs, then there is a pretty good chance that you could possibly have a herniated disc. If so, I highly recommend you find an upper cervical chiropractic near you. We work on trying to recreate the curves in the spine which will allow the disc then to ultimately suck back under that area back underneath those bones and take the pressure off the nerves so that the body can heal. And then, in that situation, not only does the nerve pain and the pain in the neck and back clear up, but we want to get it stable, so it never comes back again.

    The traditional medical approach is twofold. First, they give you medications to numb it, and it’s never going to fix anything. This bulge is still there, until it gets so bad where the drugs don’t work and then they go in and they do some sort of surgery. Now typically, if it’s early on they’ll go and they’ll shave off part of that outer bulge. Well, what they’re shaving off is the reinforcement that’s holding that gel in there so that it’s now thinner making you more susceptible to a rupture. Now a rupture is when the disc fluid, the gel part, actually squirts into the canal. The only option now is to go in and surgically have that gel taken out. Now, a more radical approach is when they’ll do fusions, and they’ll just basically cut the entire disc out and fuse the two bones together, which means now instead of having normal motion, these two are stuck together, so you have limited motion.

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.

Let’s talk to you about neck spasms or back spasms. Where do muscle spasms come from? What causes a muscle to spasm? First of all, what a spasm is, is when a muscle contracts continuously and doesn’t want to let go. Now, what would cause that? Well, a muscle spasms to protect itself. It’s literally a protective mechanism to try to protect the muscle from tearing.

It has a fear that it’s going to stretch to the point that it’s going to rip or tear apart. What it does is it contracts, and it stays contracted. And if it stays contracted long enough, then we call that a muscle spasm. Now your muscles have a reflex in the muscle itself to protect it. It’s just to keep something from ripping or tearing. The reason that you have spasms is because somewhere in that particular area, there’s a fear that the muscle could tear.

It’s stretched beyond what it should be stretched. Now what would cause that? What happens is, you can have structural shifts in your neck, your upper back, your lower back, and when that happens you lose symmetry. When you lose symmetry, that means one side has to get longer while the other side gets shorter, which means one side’s ultimately going to contract. The other side’s going to stretch.

Now when it stretches, if it stretches to a certain point, then the body, to protect itself, the muscles will start to spasm, and they won’t let go until you can re-approximate. You can make that muscle shorter again. How do you do that? Well, the only way to do that is to restore symmetry. What would cause your body to lose symmetry? Well, what happens is 99% of the time from my experience, is that one of the bones in the upper part of the neck can get out of align. When it does, it will actually take the head with it one way or another.

When it does, the brain then has a reflex called the Righting Reflex that says hey, our brain’s not straight. We have to get the brain straight. Well, when this bone goes out of position and causes that head to tilt, it can’t put it back. It’s stuck. What your body will do is, it will compensate for that head being out of balance. How will it do that? Well, let’s say it went this way. Now as a result it might cause it to drop one shoulder trying to level the head.

Now, the muscles on this side get shorter. The muscles on this side obviously get longer. If they get stretched enough, the body will spasm, and it will start to cause shoulder muscle spasms, neck muscles contract in the spine. You’ll have spasms as a response to that muscle contracting. Now you can work on the muscles, and it might relax a little bit. But it keeps coming back because it’s still stretched. You didn’t fix the underlying cause. The only way to stop the muscles from spasming on a regular basis is to re-approximate the muscle.

How do you do that? Well, you have to go up here, and you have to correct what created the original imbalance, which ended up causing a change in symmetry or loss of symmetry in your body by correcting this bone. If the bone went this way, what you have to do is now you have to bring the head back this way, and now the brain says, hey wait a minute. We’re not level again, now it brings that shoulder back up. Now you have symmetry. Your body, the muscles are the same on each side at the neck. That could be in the back. It could be anywhere in your whole body.

The best thing to do if you have muscle spasms in your neck or back, is to try to find an upper cervical chiropractor to check to see if there’s a loss of symmetry. I tell you what. You can do a test at home. This is the best way to do it. Get in front of mirror and close your eyes. Then turn your head each direction real slow, to the right, to the left. Then bring your head back to center, and now before you open your eyes, I want you to immediately look at your shoulders and look at your ear lobes, okay.

And I want you to look and see now, is one shoulder a little lower? Is one ear a little higher? Now if you want to take it to the next step, if you have a partner or somebody at home that can check you, go lay on the bed on your stomach with your feet hanging off. Put your feet together and see if your feet are the same … if they’re lined up. If your heels are lined up the same or if one’s a little shorter or a little longer than the other, that means you’ve lost some symmetry in your body. Now that only happens in the case of a misalignment at the top of the neck.