When a Pain in the Neck Won’t Go Away

It’s one of the most common complaints people have. The good news is, neck pain and stiffness often goes away by itself. The bad news is … sometimes it doesn’t.

What are the most common causes of chronic neck pain?

There are three. One is an injury that was sustained due to a car accident, an awkward trip-and-fall, or a contact-sports collision.

The second is the cumulative effect of poor posture. These days, that often includes spending hours, days, months and years at a computer without following good ergonomic practices.

The final set of causative factors include physiological degeneration; we’re talking osteoarthritis, worn joints, and disk/spine issues. Those aren’t addressed here, but there’s plenty of info about them in other posts on this Blog.

What can be done about persistent neck pain?

If your job chiefly involves staring at a computer screen, start with Googling “Ergonomic Computer Use.” You’ll find helpful tips, but it’s not enough to simply read about them. Put the advice into action by permanently changing your work station and work habits.

If you still can’t get relief from behavior changes, or standbys like painkillers, chiropractic, and heat-and-ice therapy, doctors often try nerve-block measures like steroid injections. These can temporarily relieve inflammation and pain, but can’t be used long-term without doing other damage to your body.

Plus sometimes even epidural cortisone injections won’t free you of chronic neck pain. At which point, your doctor may recommend surgery. But of course last-resort surgery is highly impactful, and comes with its own set of risks.

Before you go under the knife, know the alternatives.

Injuries you’ve sustained may have damaged or torn ligaments, joints, muscles and surrounding soft tissue. Also, after decades of slumping posture or ‘computer neck’, ligaments can become lax, and muscles can lose their integrity.

For this, many physicians are turning to the relatively new but highly promising field of Regenerative Medicine. Certain ‘biological products’, naturally produced in the human body, can be prepared and re-injected to reduce inflammation, that common enemy of good health.

They can also help heal tissue, improve blood flow, and even grow new, healthy cells.

Since every case is different, results may vary.

But after ‘ReGen Medical’ treatment, most people report much-welcome relief from their chronic neck pain.

Other non-invasive possibilities include checking for Vitamin B deficiency, accumulated toxins, and hormonal imbalances such as low testosterone – and initiating the proper treatment.

Since there may be more than one contributing issue for symptoms that we experience, often the best treatment is a carefully-planned combination of pro-active measures.