What causes neck muscle pain?

The most common causes of neck muscle pain are stress, initial injury, or trauma. Neck pain such as whiplash can occur after a car accident or a fall. Stress can often lead to neck pain and lead to muscle pain, tension, and other symptoms such as headache or sleep issues.

Neck muscle pain often has stiff or tight upper neck or back muscles. People also present with headaches, numbness or tingling down arms, and pain in other areas especially the shoulders and mid-back. Neck and muscle pain can be quite debilitating. They often occur together and can lead to muscle spasms, headaches, sleep disturbance, and low energy.

What are ways to relieve neck pain?

The #1 way to provide relief for neck muscle pain is to find the underlying cause. The majority of the time it can be relieved by proper breathing exercises, stretches, and adequate hydration. Proper assessment and diagnosis should always be done to ensure adequate treatment.

Quite often relief can come quick if the pain-spasm cycle as well as the nerve and muscle inflammation is stopped. Often people come in to our office ‘having tried everything else’ even having imaging like an x-ray or MRI that is ‘normal’ or shows common culprits leading to neck pain such as spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, bulging disc, or high stress leading to muscle tension. The treatments that we do at Starting Point Acupuncture, work to address all aspects of why the muscles are in spasm and to help microcirculation and nerve health. For those cases with known cause of muscle spasm or neck pain, such as those with spinal stenosis, acupuncture helps to relieve pressure on the nerve and restore normal function.

Read Dr. Heintze’s previous post about how we can help neck pain, here.

A study in the journal Pain, found that acupuncture is more effective than the placebo in reducing the pain intensity from chronic neck pain. Acupuncture can help to relieve muscle pain and spasms and has been shown to be an effective treatment for acute and chronic pain.

If you suffer from neck muscle pain or any chronic pain. Give our office a call today at (425) 686-4498 to schedule your initial consultation to learn more about how we can help.

Dr. Ellie Heintze, ND, LAc, is a naturopathic doctor and acupuncturist in Bothell, WA at her practice Starting Point Acupuncture. She specializes in chronic and complex cases and commonly treats neuropathy, fibromyalgia, migraines, autoimmune, and infertility cases. Dr. Ellie Heintze is also the author of the book, A Starting Point Guide to Going Gluten-Free  and Keep Calm and Zen Out available on Amazon.

Sources:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304395906003605