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Treating Neck Pain

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Solutions for Neck Pain

Pain is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. Neck pain is much more than just a “pain in the neck” – if you are suffering and looking for neck pain relief in San Diego, CA, you are in the right place. Chronic neck pain can make everyday activities like driving, working, or exercising almost impossible – but there are solutions. At Intouch Chiropractic, we focus our work and expertise on the upper neck, the most delicate and important part of the spine, because it is the closest to the brain and has the most neurological impact. A neck injury can misalign the bones, locking them into place and causing them to get stuck in a stressed position.

When this happens, it commonly irritates and pinches small pain-sensitive nerves in the neck, shoulder, and upper back. The sooner you seek health care, the better chance you have of getting neck pain relief right away and avoiding arthritis and disc degeneration in your neck down the road. Many of our patients experience significant, rapid relief after their first treatments – without medication, injections, or invasive procedures.

This Is How Kathy P. Finally Got Relief for Her Neck Pain

Patient giving a testimonial on neck pain therapies at Intouch Chiropractic

You Deserve Relief From Chronic Neck Pain

Many patients report that their pain just started out of the blue and has no known cause. Other patients report that they have been suffering from rebound symptoms from taking painkillers every day for years of their life. A variety of factors play a contributing role in neck pain, including childhood falls, sports injuries, poor posture, and auto crashes.

Patients can sometimes pinpoint the cause of their neck pain, while others say that their symptoms came on gradually. Macro-traumas like accidents or injuries, as well as micro-traumas such as repetitive motions like sitting at a desk for many hours with poor ergonomics, hours of text messaging, or sleeping on your tummy night after night, can all be to blame.

Some chronic neck pain patients also mention that they have numbness, tingling, and muscle weakness in the shoulders, arms, hands, or fingers. Chronic neck pain often brings headaches, migraines, vertigo, TMJ, and tinnitus (ear ringing) along with it. If you need neck pain treatment options, please know that our upper cervical chiropractic care in San Diego, CA is comprised of experienced experts who have been helping people with their neck pain relief in San Diego for years.

Upper Cervical Care for Neck Pain Relief

Our Upper Cervical Care doctors specialize in finding abnormalities in the alignment of your neck. They use NUCCA protocols, which are gentle, precise, non-surgical, and non-invasive. Our analysis takes 100% of the guesswork out, as we use measurements specific to your anatomy to know how to best adjust you without any twisting, cracking, or popping of your neck or spine.

Less than 300 doctors worldwide specialize in NUCCA care. Rather than simply treating the symptoms, your chiropractic care at Intouch Chiropractic will provide a long-term strategy to not only get the pain relief that you seek right away but also prevent future spinal decay. A large percentage of our patients benefit greatly from our unique combined approach of NUCCA Spinal Care, Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression, and laser therapy – that’s the Intouch Chiropractic difference.

A technician at Intouch Chiropractic in San Diego performs shockwave therapy on a patient's neck.

Common Causes of Neck Pain

Every patient is unique, right down to their anatomy and flexibility, but neck pain is unfortunately very common. Your head weighs 10-15 pounds – about the weight of a bowling ball – balanced on top of a tiny, 2-ounce bone called the atlas.

Unlike other joints in your spine, the joints at the base of your skull do not interlock. This allows you tremendous flexibility and mobility, making it possible for you to back out of your driveway without much effort or thought when healthy. The trade-off to the increased flexibility of this part of the spine is increased vulnerability: your upper neck is the most delicate part of your spine.

The Most Common Causes of Neck Pain Include:

Overuse

Your muscles strain after long hours of being hunched over a computer, smartphone, or knitting project. Even activities such as reading in bed, sitting on the couch for too long, or grinding your teeth can strain your neck muscles over the years and cause you to experience pain.

Damaged Joints

Joints degenerate naturally over time. As this happens, your body deposits extra bone (bone spurs) to help stabilize the spine. We commonly know this degeneration as arthritis, which limits joint motion and causes severe pain.

Disc Injuries

Herniated discs and bulging discs can cause spinal nerve root compression. This can be very painful, especially if disc material causes chemical irritation to delicate nerve endings.

Certain Conditions

Conditions and diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, post-concussion syndrome, meningitis, and cancer can all cause neck pain.

Whiplash Trauma

Trauma from a slip-and-fall, sports injury, or car accident can cause a whiplash injury. In fact, any injury that hyperflexes and hyperextends the head and neck damages the soft tissues of your neck. Without treatment, many of these whiplash injuries can have symptoms that sometimes don’t surface until decades later.

Another great visit with my Intouch doctor (Jeanett Tapia)! The support staff is friendly, caring, professional, and competent. I feel fortunate to be a patient there. The range of motion of my neck has improved a great amount.

-Fritz Z.

A New Kind of Neck Pain: “Text Neck” – and How To Avoid It

Technology, technology, technology! The amount of time we spend with our heads bent down looking at devices is only growing by the day. The amount of time we spend looking at our phones, scrolling through email, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media is staggering. As of 2019, the average person spent 153 minutes on social platforms per day – that’s over 2 1/2 hours per day. Let’s talk a bit about physics. When you are looking straight ahead, your head weighs 10-15 pounds. However, every inch that the head moves forward puts you in a stressed position. According to Dr. Kenneth K. Hansraj, tilting the head forward just:

15 degrees can increase the force on the neck to 27 pounds
30 degrees can increase the force on the neck to 40 pounds

45 degrees can increase the force on the neck to 49 pounds
60 degrees can increase the force on the neck to 60 pounds

In this example, the head weighed 12 pounds when looking straight ahead. So, the amount of stress on the spine increases astronomically, thanks to the forces of gravity when you look down.

Here’s a tip: Next time you are on your phone, tablet, or laptop, remember to bring your device up to eye level instead of slouching and bending your head and neck downwards.

If you are suffering from new or chronic pain in your neck, don’t rely on painkillers or more invasive treatment options to deal with your sever pain. Call our office or schedule a appointment with our pain management specialists to see what our upper cervical chiropractors in San Diego, CA can do for you.

Common Questions

Neck Pain FAQs

Have More Questions? Visit Our Full FAQ Page.

What Causes Neck Pain?

Neck pain often comes from more than one source. Common causes include overuse from poor posture (hunching over a phone or computer), joint degeneration such as arthritis, disc injuries like herniated or bulging discs pressing on nerve roots, whiplash trauma from an accident or fall, and certain conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia.

Can Neck Pain Cause Headaches?

Yes. Tension in the neck's muscles, joints, or upper cervical spine can radiate pain into the head, a pattern known as a cervicogenic headache. Misalignment near the top of the neck can also contribute to migraines. If your headaches consistently follow neck pain or stiffness, the neck is a likely underlying source worth addressing directly.

What Is Text Neck?

Text neck is a repetitive strain injury caused by prolonged phone or device use with your head bent forward and down. In a neutral position, your head puts about 10-12 pounds of pressure on your neck — but at the 45-60 degree angle typical of looking at a phone, that pressure jumps to 50-60 pounds, straining the muscles, discs, and joints of the cervical spine over time.

When Should I See a Doctor for Neck Pain?

Most neck pain can be evaluated on a non-emergency basis, but some symptoms need immediate care. Seek emergency care for fever with neck stiffness, arm weakness, numbness, or tingling alongside radiating pain, loss of bowel or bladder control, neck pain following significant trauma, or neck pain with chest pain. Otherwise, if pain persists beyond a few weeks, it's worth getting evaluated.

Can a Chiropractor Help With Neck Pain?

Yes — chiropractic care is one of the most common approaches for neck pain, especially when it stems from misalignment, joint restriction, or poor posture. At Intouch Chiropractic, we use NUCCA Spinal Care, a precise upper-cervical technique that addresses the root cause without popping, cracking, or twisting, along with spinal decompression and laser therapy for disc-related or inflammatory pain.

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