Chiropractic Treatment for Neck Pain in Franklin, TN
Neck pain is one of the most common reasons someone seeks care with us at Mission Health Center. Between 20-70% of all US adults will experience neck pain, with women being almost two times more likely to experience pain.
One of the reasons for so many problems with the neck has to do with the head’s weight. On average, the head weighs 8-12 pounds. Studies show that for every inch your head sticks out from its true center of gravity, your neck will absorb an extra 10 pounds of stress. It is very common to see patients with heads jutting forward an additional 2 to 3 inches!!! This deviation away from normal body posture adds 20-30 pounds of pressure onto your neck.
Neck pain can be caused by macro traumas such as whiplash from a motor vehicle accident, sports accidents/injuries, and slips and falls, but many people who experience neck pain find it is caused by micro traumas. Micro traumas are bad habits, stress, poor posture, and your everyday work and home routine. One of the most common causes is computer-based work and the use of your cell phone. This is referred to as “Text Neck” or Tech Neck,” from all the downward-looking at your phone. In fact, people spend on average 4 hours per day on their phones!
The common signs of a stiff neck are soreness, pain or tightness, trouble moving the neck without pain, difficulty getting comfortable when sleeping, tension headaches, shoulder pain, arm pain, and loss of range of motion.
A study performed by the National Institutes of Health looked at the effectiveness of different treatments for decreasing neck pain, including spinal adjustments performed by a chiropractor, pain medication, and exercise. The results indicated that those who received the chiropractic adjustments and followed a therapeutic exercise plan had a 75% reduction in neck pain!
At Mission Health Center in Franklin, TN, we are corrective chiropractors who perform specific spinal adjustments to reduce and remove the unwanted pressure on your nerves, restore normal spinal motion, and thus allow your joints to move more effectively while reducing your neck pain.
How We Treat Neck Back Pain in Franklin, TN
Comprehensive Consultation and Examination
Treating neck pain starts with a complete medical history and review of all the potential mechanisms that could have created your pain. At Mission Health Center, this happens with a doctor who is really going to listen to what’s been going on so they can understand how this pain is affecting your life. A thorough chiropractic examination follows your consultation to determine the exact origin and underlying causes of the pain. A spinal exam includes assessing your ranges of movement, feeling the spinal bones and muscles surrounding your spine, and determining areas of restriction, swelling of the muscles, or any tenderness/pain you may be experiencing. Spinal x-rays may be necessary to understand and identify a potential underlying cause, such as shifting the spine based on the examination results.
Specific Chiropractic Care
At Mission Health Center, specific chiropractic care is the most important thing we offer for patients suffering from neck pain. Spinal subluxation, a misalignment of the spine, is the cause of most neck pain. A subluxation is when your spine has moved out of proper positioning and alignment, stretching the muscles and discs and compressing the nerves that exit between the bones.
This shifting causes pressure on the spinal discs and irritates the nerves leading to pain in the neck or pain down into the shoulders, arms, or even hands. As specific corrective chiropractors, our goal is to use a chiropractic adjustment to restore proper spinal alignment and remove pressure on the nerves. This will allow your spine to function and your body to heal. If your spine is left in a damaged, misaligned position, it can cause bone remodeling to occur called degeneration and lead to arthritis.
Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan
Exercising regularly – both cardio and strength training – can help to reduce neck pain. Regular exercise increases your flexibility and movement, improves your posture, strengthens weak muscles, regulates stress hormones, decreases inflammation, improves sleep, and supports healthy body weight. We believe in specific stretching and strengthening plans designed specifically for you and your case to increase spinal movement and develop core stability to help you improve your functional deficiencies while addressing posture and other underlying problems. We will recommend therapeutic exercises to do in our clinic; we will also send you home with a plan to perform at home to get better faster and get the results you need. We believe in working with you, as a team, in order to reduce your symptoms and relieve the pain you are experiencing.
Spinal Decompression
Within your neck, you have multiple structures that can produce and create pain – muscles, nerves, shifting of the spine, and, most importantly, the spinal disc. The disc is the shock-absorber, the cushion between each spinal bone. At Mission Health Center, we use specialized techniques and technology called Spinal Decompression. This treatment slowly and safely stretches the spine to reduce inflammation and pain and restore discs that have swollen, slipped, bulged, or even herniated to a degree. These disc injuries create neck pain as well as pain that runs down into the upper back, shoulders, and even down into the arms and hands.
Spinal Decompression slowly stretches the neck. This slow, pumping type of stretch will open the disc spaces and allow oxygen, nutrients, and water to pull into the disc, allowing it to heal and start to decrease the disc bulge that could create neck pain.
As part of our technique to help improve your health and decrease your pain, we combine a specific chiropractic adjustment and therapeutic exercises following your spinal decompression treatment to help correct this problem and prevent it from happening again.
Food and Supplements
Eating a diet high in processed foods and sugars is proven to cause high levels of inflammation in your body, making your muscles more susceptible to pain and injury, reducing your neck’s range of motion, and decreasing your body’s ability to heal from injuries quickly.
Eating a nutrient-dense diet filled with anti-inflammatory foods is the key to decreasing unwanted inflammation and thus improving your body’s ability to heal itself naturally from the inside out.
Some of the most common foods that lead to inflammation in your body include:
- processed meats
- chemically sprayed produce
- alcohol
- packaged snacks
The top foods that help lead to reduced inflammation and thus healing on the inside include:
- vegetables (green leafy vegetables such as kale, Swiss chard, romaine, etc.)
- healthy fats (like avocados and coconut oil)
- lean protein (wild-caught fish, free-range chicken, and grass-fed meat)
Some of the top supplements to help reduce pain are:
- turmeric
- magnesium
- Boswellia
- collagen
Commons Causes of Neck Pain
Bulged Cervical Discs
Between each of the seven bones in your neck is a soft cushion referred to as a disc. A vertebral disc serves as a shock absorber, allowing our neck to move in all of its ranges of motion. Due to poor posture, repetitive motion injuries over time can cause the discs in the neck to become damaged. As they become weakened, the disc will take the path of least resistance, very similar to compressing a water balloon. The ballon will not pop but will “bulge” one way or another. This disc bulging causes inflammation and puts direct pressure on the nerve roots as they exit the spine, leading to symptoms felt in the shoulders and arms. The treatments we perform at Mission Health Center are gentle and specific to allow the body and discs to heal properly, without surgery or medications.
Tech Neck or Text Neck
We live in a digital age which not only has its benefits but also creates the risk of severe and permanent health problems. The use of mobile devices in Franklin, TN can result in a harmful and dangerous physical condition on the human body known as Text Neck or Tech Neck. On average, Americans spend up to 4 hours per day communicating and socializing on their phones—this downward-looking posture creates a repetitive stress injury within the neck.
Tech neck typically presents with a condition known as forward head posture, which increases stress on the joints and muscles in the neck and presents as pain at the bottom of the neck and the base of the skull. At Mission Health Center, our team specializes in helping improve your posture and decrease the pain resulting from Tech Neck and looking down at your devices all day.
Subluxation
A spinal subluxation is a condition in your spine when a bone shifts out of proper alignment, thus putting pressure on nearby spinal nerves. Chiropractors are specially trained to locate and correct subluxation. While stretches and exercise help heal a subluxation, there is no exercise, stretch, or medication that will fix a subluxation without a gentle and specific chiropractic adjustment to provide instant relief for neck pain.
Whiplash
The weight of your head is around 10 pounds. The quick forward-backward motion resulting from a motor vehicle collision, even as low as three mph, can cause a condition known as “whiplash.” Whiplash is one of the most common car accident injuries in Franklin, TN. This injury to the spine can cause neck pain, decreased range of motion, and neck stiffness. It is common for patients to have neck pain for years following a motor vehicle crash. Chiropractic care is an effective way to treat whiplash and restore normal function and movement in the neck.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a chiropractor in Franklin, TN good for neck pain?
Yes! In fact, chiropractic should be your first call when it comes to neck pain. At Mission Health Center in Franklin, TN, we have helped literally thousands of people with all types of neck pain.
When should you see a chiropractor for neck pain?
The answer is: when you first experience the pain. We recommend getting an evaluation as soon as you experience the problem to determine its origin: bone, disc, or muscle. It is important to identify and treat the problem as soon as possible before it becomes more severe later on.
Is it okay to pop my own neck?
It is not recommended that you pop your own neck. When I see someone “popping” their neck, I ask them which bone they just moved. They have no idea. The truth is that often, if not every time, the bone that “pops” is the one that is the weakest link, not the one that needs to be adjusted or moved back into proper alignment. This is why you have to continually “pop” your neck because you are not correcting the right bone in the right area. As a chiropractor, we are trained to specifically and gently adjust the neck to alleviate the neck pain and restore normal motion and movement to the spine.
How can you tell if your neck is out of alignment?
Multiple identifiers help us determine if your neck is out of alignment. The first one is by looking at your posture and body positioning, something you can do first before coming into the office. Stand in front of a mirror and look at yourself. Does it look like your head is tilted, rotated, or shifted to one side? This is one of the first indicators your neck is out of alignment. When someone presents to our clinic for evaluation, we will not only look at the positioning of the neck, but we will also take a digital x-ray which will serve as a blueprint to your spine to fully understand what is happening on the inside.