Ergonomics For Neck Pain
Hey dr pound, here with heal, better fast, and today we’re talking about the top three things you can do for neck pain for people who work at a desk, Now LifeStyle, if you’ve been working at a desk and you have neck pain and you want to avoid reaching for drugs of surgery – Ergonomics for neck pain here are the top three things. I recommend people do base on my clinical research and experience here in the clinic so number one. First of all, you’ve got to watch head position and posture. That’S one of the most important things and I know it’s easier said than done, but it’s really important to watch your head where it is at in relation to the shoulders every inch forward.
Your head comes from your shoulders, can actually add about 10 pounds of pressure to the bottom of your neck, and so it’s not uncommon. When I have patients come in, who have no history of any trauma but they’re, maybe in their mid-30s, and they spend a lot of time working at the desk to do an x-ray or even an MRI and find disc issues with these people who spend time with Their head forward from their shoulders, so the shoulders are kind of your way to judge where your head is in relation to good posture. So if you wanted to check this for yourself, what I’d recommend is you just find a straight wall? Go ahead and lean your back against the wall and your head. Ergonomics for neck pain Now, your head should be back against the wall, and your shoulders should be back against the wall if both are back against the wall. You’ll notice that here, on the side, your ears line up with your shoulder – that’s good posture now for some of you, this may be really hard to get to this position and you shouldn’t force it by any means.
But at least you can go and check and see how far off you are from the good, symmetrical posture. What posture does this good posture do? Is it keeps the center of gravity over your over your shoulders, so your neck can act like a spring. Take the pressure off of you off of the top of your head. If your head is forward, your spine has to do more of the work and it’ll lead to accelerated degenerative changes in your neck. So you want to avoid that, Ergonomics for neck pain, and the best way to do that is to watch that head posture. Now, if you have any pain, when you go back into good posture, that means there could be something wrong and the best thing to do is to get checked out by a health care professional before you just force your neck back into extension. So again, if any of this causes pain, don’t do it stop doing it immediately and get checked out by a health care professional. But if you’re working at your desk throughout the day and a lot of you are working from home, so you’re you’re, not in good ergonomic positions anymore, just go ahead and check your posture at the wall.
And so you know where you should be most of the day if you can alright tip number. Two is what I call chicken neck exercises, and this is simply getting a better range of motion through your neck through the spine. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to focus on bringing the chin forward and then pulling it back chin forward and then pulling it back, and you want that to be a smooth transition between the two positions. You do that about 20 times several times throughout the day. That’ll help improve the not only the range of motion in your neck and the spine, but you can also see when i tuck back. You can see these muscles kind of pop out when I go forward. I’m working the muscles on the back and these muscles on the front are neck flexor muscles and they often get weak. As our head comes forward. Our traps get tight from trying to pull our head back into good posture and they get overworked, and then you go home with these tight muscles through the shoulders, and then you need someone to massage you. Well, if you fix this, then you don’t need that anymore.
So it’s really good to do all right tip number three, and this is where we get into actually building the strength in the neck. So you don’t have that problem of a kinked neck. You want to add some resistance and do some exercises for your neck. Think of it as strengthening the core muscles in your neck, Ergonomics for neck pain all right, so we already talked about these muscles that are getting overworked. The trap trapezius muscles in the back, so we want to work the muscles in the front and the sides one of the easiest ways to do that is to grab your hand and push it against your head. As I’m pushing straight forward, you can see the muscle start to engage, but I’m not moving my head forward or moving it back. I’m just adding and meeting the pressure with my hand against my head. That’S going to start working these muscles in my neck. The second thing you do is push your head to the side.
Now you can see, i start working the muscles on the side without stressing the spine and again, I’m working those muscles. Think of it as the core muscles in the neck to be able to support the head and take pressure off of the spine and the disc, and these three tips are great for a lot of my patients who want to get rid of that dull achiness. That comes at the end of the day after working at a desk. So if you’re suffering neck pain – and you find yourself sitting at a desk poor posture and it’s not – Ergonomics for neck pain and these three tips aren’t working, you can always call my office. We can do an evaluation, try and figure out the root problem that’s causing the pain. My name is dr pound, helping you heal better fast
