Neck Pain Treatment In Hilton & Ashbourne
Neck pain
Neck pain is unfortunately pretty common and the way we live our modern lives can unfortunately contribute to the stress we put on our necks – but that’s ok as there is lots we can do to help with this.
Neck pain can take many forms from:
- Dull aches to sharp spasms
- From pain localised to the neck to pain radiating into the arm or up into the head
- From pain looking up to pain when you lower your head eg to read
- From stiffness turning to look over your shoulder to not able to move your head at all.
- Neck pain is always an inconvenience but in some cases it can take over lives.
At Ashbourne and Hilton Physio centres we love guiding you through a programme of treatment to help relieve your pain, restore confident movement and regain your strength and full potential. Our physios have decades of experience treating thousands of necks but we still treat every one as an individual as we believe this is how to get results and when you feel better we know we’re doing our job.
Often spinal pains come from a mix of irritated areas and could include:
- Disc injuries
- Facet joint irritation
- Nerve irritation with pain and pins and needles into the arm
- Muscle or ligament sprains
- Osteoporosis
- Postural strains and tensions
- Fractures
- Age related spinal changes – called spondylosis
Treatment might include a selection from those described below:
- If pain levels allow, we like to use our manual skills/‘hands on’ treatments to help you to move better where stiffness has set in – this might be by mobilising joints or massaging muscles. We can also work with you to encourage activation of the muscles that have backed off working due to pain. Once we have started this process we can show you how to maintain the movement and muscle strength with simple exercises that you can carry out regularly at home (we will even send you an email showing videos of your exercises along with a chart/diary to monitor how regularly you’ve been able to do them in partnership with ‘rehab my patient’). This is never an ‘off the shelf’ programme, it is designed specifically by your therapist for your problem and situation.
- We will give you plenty of advice about how to get comfortable at work, sleeping, driving etc and will talk to you about how to get the best out of any painkillers you might be taking. We will talk through with you ways you can keep your fitness while working through this episode of pain.
- If your pain is severe we can help with electro therapy or sometimes acupuncture and advise on whether heat or cold packs might be beneficial in the short term
- We know that only around 2% of the problems we see will need an MRI scan as the vast majority of neck pain settles with little intervention but we do understand how scary an episode of neck pain can be. We ensure there is plenty of time for discussion about your progress and any concerns you have. We don’t have all the answers but research is finding out more every year about spinal pain and the good news is us humans are generally much more robust than we think we are.
- There are occasions where an onward referral for further investigations or a surgical opinion is necessary and your physio will discuss with whether this is appropriate for you and your situation at this time. In other situations a referral into a local exercise class may be appropriate and if you think that approach would work for you we can advise on the type of course and have plenty of local links to Pilates, yoga and Tai Chi instructors should you wish to follow this up.
We would be delighted to help you on the road to recovery and there’s nothing we like more than a challenge! We are often asked to see people where previous approaches have not worked. We will never ask you to sign up to a course of treatment and there will certainly never be a hard sell. We will endeavour to give you a realistic estimation of how long recovery will take and we will tell you if we don’t think we can help. For more information give us a ring or look around our website.