How to get rid of your sore neck
Do you feel stiff in your neck and shoulders? Chiropractor Niklas Hollerup knows how to relieve and prevent your problems.
Stiffness, soreness and pain in the neck and shoulders affect most of us at some point in our lives. It is one of the most common causes of sick leave in Sweden and if you have a sedentary job, neck problems are the rule rather than the exception.
- We do a lot of work in front of our bodies these days, such as typing on the computer, driving or cooking. This means that we lose a lot of extension, backward bending, in the thoracic spine and when we fall forward in the thoracic spine there is a tension in the neck, explains Niklas Hollereup who is a chiropractor at Chiropraktik Akuten in Limhamn, Malmö.
In simple terms, neck pain is due to the spine not moving as it should, which creates different types of locks. Static jobs are a big culprit here, but sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day is unfortunately unavoidable for many of us. Luckily, there are some simple things you can do to be kinder to your neck.
- Keep your desk at a good height, preferably a height-adjustable desk. The keyboard should be as close to the body as possible and the screen should also be at a good level, even if you are working on a laptop, so that you can look up," says Niklas Hollerup.
Standing up to work gives a completely different posture and position of the neck, but lower the table if you start hanging on one foot, sit down for an hour and stand up again. It's better to alternate between sitting and standing than to overload your body.
Other good tips include moving for a few minutes every hour, walking around the office or doing some quick stretches. Lunchtime exercise is also great for your neck and shoulders.
- Working out at lunchtime makes you feel much better and more efficient in your work environment. You break off a long and static day, increase endorphins in the body and get a different muscle activity and throughput in the body.
Niklas Hollerup is Leg. Chiropractor. Follow his clinic on the Instagram account @Kiropraktik.
Neck pain does not only have to be due to many hours in front of the computer, it can be about stress, that you train wrong or have started to train more and harder.
- Perhaps you have poor training techniques for back exercises or have made a New Year's resolution and do a classic from zero to one hundred percent in two weeks. Your muscles, ligaments and joints are not keeping up, which can lead to pain or injury.
Is it possible to train the neck?
- Yes, absolutely. You can train your back and thoracic spine, and improve posture and mobility in the thoracic spine with foam rolling, yoga or movement training to reduce stiffness.
What you should definitely not do is break your neck yourself - no matter how good it feels in the moment. Self-breaking only leads to more stiffness and headaches.
- It hurts my body when I think about what happens when you self-crack," says Niklas Hollerup, explaining that the nice, cracking feeling does not fix the actual problem:
- Visualize 6 vertebrae in front of you where the one in the middle is locked and does not want to move as it should. Then the body will modify itself and make something else move more, because the last thing the body wants is to not move properly. When you break yourself, you only break what is already moving too much.
How do you stop self-cracking your neck?
- It's all about training and strengthening the muscles. Why a neck moves too much is because something else is not moving. If you feel that you are having problems, it is good to have a massage or have the problem treated by a naprapath or chiropractor. It is not dangerous to break your neck yourself, but it is not good.
If you have neck pain, get help from a chiropractor or naprapath as early as possible.
Stiff joints, neck pain, numbness in the arms or reduced mobility are particularly important to check with a chiropractor or naprapath, but any type of neck pain that interferes with your everyday life should be treated as soon as possible. Over time, problems become more chronic, which means that it takes longer and usually more treatments to become pain-free.
- The brain reprograms itself over time and the longer you have a problem, the longer it takes to fix it. As long as it is not a major disease problem, it can be treated, so do it as soon as the problems arise. It will be better and cheaper in the long run.
READ MORE: Why you shouldn't break your back yourself
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SHOP HERE: Foamrollers - the only way you can break your back yourself
