A Pain in the Neck

No I am not talking about my children. I am going to take a moment and discuss a email I received from a reader. A reader of my blog sent me this message I am going to keep it anonymous for reasons of protecting the privacy of the individual. They wrote:

My neck keeps me up and wakes me up and my shoulders stay tender.Massage therapy has been a temporary relief. Exercising helps only because I'm so tired afterwards I pass out. I'm running out of options.Thanks

Well I am going to do my best with this. I have to first say this is by no means a diagnosis for you. It is really hard to tell you exactly what is going on with out an examination and x-rays, but I am going to give my opinion based on educated and experience. First off I or some other Dr. would have to take a history. I start with that because it is common sense to start with that. We need to identify what started it was it (accident, sports, repetitive motion, work injury, etc.) though all of these may seem the same the Mechanism of injury is very important to the treatment of the problem.

Then we follow with an exam this can lead you to identifying the cause of your pain. Side note there is a reason that you have pain Identifying that source and fixing the source will decrease pain. what I am going to assume (I know you should never assume) is that the massage worked better at the beginning than it does now... I will list a few things that might cause this pain.
1. Subluxation (misalignment of the bones of spine)
2. Muscle (spasms)
3. Disc Herniation (bulge)
4. Disc degeneration (loss of the cushion between Bones)
5. Nerve (what some people call a pinched nerve)
6. Spinal stenosis (you don't what this can affect the spinal cord)
7. and many other significant diagnosis

Again I am not telling you you have any of these things, but these diagnosis have to be ruled out. You rule out or in the diagnosis with things like Physical Exam of area (spine), X-rays, MRI, EMG etc....

My suggestion to you would be to get it checked out. The problem with waiting is that no matter what you think it is not going to get any better, and more than likely it will get worse. You need to be proactive with this condition or you might end up with not a whole lot of options left to treat the condition. This is by no means to scare you just to motivate you.

I hope this helps answer a few questions. And to all Remember that you can call my office to set up a Consult to discuss options Free of Charge. Your partner in health. Dr. Nathan