When you wake up with a pain in the neck, it’s not always because of the way you sleep. In fact, your psychology, your eyesight, your stress, even your diet can play a role.
It’s one of those things that’s so debilitating, it’s scary — you never realize how much you depend on being able to turn your head to the side until you can’t do it.
Knowing what’s causing your neck pain is the best way to avoid dependence on painkillers to solve the problem with a band aid solution. You find the cause, you cure the cause, you cure your neck pain — it can really be that simple.
Bad Posture
How you align your spine can have a major impact on how your neck muscles sit. When you sit incorrectly, you put unnecessary strain on your neck muscles, overworking them and causing pain.
At the risk of sounding like Yoda, we’re going there: a bad chair leads to bad spine alignment, bad spine alignment leads to bad neck alignment, bad neck alignment, leads to suffering.
Get a good ergonomic desk chair, make sure your monitor is at eye level (and adjust if you need to), and sit up straight when you work — it can make all the difference in the world.
Stress
Believe it or not, psychosomatic pain is all too real and all too common. When your brain is overworked and stressed out, it can (and often does) manifest itself in physical pain, often in the neck. This can even lead to migraines.
Take a chill pill. Mute your mother-in-law for 30 days. Get a massage. Do whatever you need to do, but reduce mental stress to reduce neck pain. We promise, it works better than you might think.
Bad Pillows
When it comes to pillows, you have to take the Goldilocks approach to avoid neck pain. Too much elevation, and you put your neck in an unnatural sleeping position. Too flat and firm of a pillow, and you’re not going to get the support you need.
Do some experimentation to find the right level of support and the right material for your noggin, but don’t overdo it if you want to be able to turn your head in the morning.
Being Overweight
Being at an unhealthy weight does more than just complicate your blood sugar and waistline, it can also cause bone and muscle pain. Excessive weight puts strain on your entire bone structure and can cause stress on those muscles and joints.
Work on staying at a healthy weight, and the benefits will compound all the way down to whittling your neck pain away.
Injuries and Accidents
When life happens, sometimes, whiplash happens with it. Car accidents, roller coaster rides, trying to keep an eye on your kids — whatever it is, know that these injuries can take months, even years to heal.
Work with a chiropractor on correcting those issues — this isn’t one cause you can typically DIY a solution to for neck pain.
Degenerative Disc Disease
As we get older, the discs between our vertebrae start to become more stiff, diminishing their shock absorption abilities and causing neck stiffness and pain. Much of this is a result of genetics and the natural process of aging, but some of it can be negated with a healthy diet and regular exercise.
Other Bone Diseases
If your neck pain just doesn’t quit, no matter what you try, the problem could be larger than what you do in a day. Talk to a doctor about getting tested for bone diseases, which can be genetic and brought on by age. Knowing the cause is the first step to knowing how to fix it.
What have you used to overcome your neck pain? Tell us in the comments below!
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