5 DIY Neck Pain Treatments

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

neck pain treatment st. cloudThe neck is an incredibly complex part of the body that is in almost constant use. As a result, it’s easy to incur overuse injuries and chronic pain in the neck. Neck pain is, quite simply a “pain in the neck.” It can hinder your daily activities and put you in a bad mood. Below are 5 treatments for neck pain that you can do at home: 

  1. Good posture. Your neck is directly connected to your spine, and thus directly affected by your posture. When you slouch, your lower back bends forward, causing your neck to strain forward in order to compensate.
  2. Over the counter pain relievers. Common pain relievers like aspirin and ibuprofen can decrease inflammation and pain in the neck. As with all medication, be careful not to overdo it with these pain relievers. Only take them as needed.
  3. Heat & Ice. A combination of hot and cold can help relieve neck pain. Wrapping a handful of ice in a towel and resting it on your neck for 5-10 minutes can reduce inflammation, while applying heat (by taking a hot shower for example) can increase circulation.
  4. Massage. Having someone rub your neck and shoulders is a great way to loosen up the muscles and help you relax.
  5. Workplace habits. It’s important to stay at eye level with your computer at work. If your monitor is higher or lower than your eye level, you will strain your neck by constantly looking up or down. This can have a terrible toll on your neck muscles, especially if you’re on your computer for 8 hours a day.

If you still have persistent neck pain after trying these treatment methods, there may be a more serious underlying issue. If this is the case, it’s a good idea to consult a doctor who specializes in pain management.

Acute Pain vs. Chronic Pain: Definitions & Differences

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

neck painThere are many definitions of pain. Because pain is often subjective, everyone will define and describe it in their own personal terms.

Dictionary vs. Medical Definition of Pain

The dictionary describes pain as physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury. Medicine becomes very technical in its description of pain, often concentrating on the physical aspects, structures involved, and trying to determine if it is “real.” The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain as:

“An unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.”

Pain has both physical and emotional correlates. If someone has pain, there is usually a physical cause in the body that needs to be found. Pain may also have significant emotional correlates in the brain. The processing centers in the brain for many pain signals sit next to the areas that control emotional stability. Therefore, if people have significant amounts of pain, spread of pain signals to emotional areas of the brain can easily occur, affecting mood and depression.

Pain is always subjective. It is a learned experience, and it is very individualized. A person learns what pain is through experiences related to injuries as a child and as they grow up.

Acute vs. Chronic Pain

In medicine, pain is the interpretation of certain sensory signals, generated from a variety of receptors in the body. When the sensory signals are ongoing, most people interpret these as pain, and seek treatment to relieve them. There are two primary types of pain:

  • Acute pain is from definite tissue injury and will fade after the cause is identified and treated. A common example is cutting a finger – it hurts, it heals, and the pain is gone.
  • Chronic pain occurs when damage causes ongoing sensory signals for long periods of time, and in some degree becomes independent of the actual tissue damage. This type of pain is difficult to stop, and often the best treatment is working on systems to manage the pain.

Understanding the complexities of pain, the body, the sensory nervous system, and the overall interactions in the body are some of the important aspects for a medical doctor who treats patients with pain. A good pain physician understands people and medicine and how all these interact, allowing them to find the causes and improve the quality of your life.