It stings when you turn your head too quickly. By the end of the workday your neck has given up. You stretch it, it helps for an hour, and tomorrow it is back. You have changed your pillow, your position and your setup, and you still wake up stiff.
Your head sits on the smallest bones in your spine, and screens pull it forward all day. Those small joints get stressed, and the muscles clamp down to protect them. So the knot you can feel is not the problem, it is your body protecting the problem. At Momentum Health Center in Arlington Heights we find the joints that stopped moving, show you what we found, and address the desk setup that keeps pulling you back into it. Dr. Matt Eschenbaum treats neck pain and cervical radiculopathy as a clinical focus.
Common Causes of Neck Pain
Neck pain usually has more than one contributor:
- Forward Head Posture: Every inch your head sits forward multiplies the load your neck muscles carry.
- Restricted Cervical Joints: When the small joints stop gliding properly, the muscles around them tighten to compensate.
- Sleep Position: A pillow that leaves your neck unsupported keeps tissue under strain for hours at a time.
- Whiplash and Old Trauma: A car accident can leave a movement restriction that outlasts the soreness by years.
- Nerve Irritation: Pressure at the nerve root can send pain, numbness or weakness into the shoulder and arm.
- Stress Loading: Sustained tension through the upper back and shoulders keeps the cervical spine compressed.
Symptoms Related to Neck Pain
Neck problems present in several ways, and often more than one:
- Stiffness and reduced range when checking a blind spot
- Aching at the base of the skull that builds through the afternoon
- Tightness across the shoulders and upper back
- Numbness, tingling or weakness into the arm or hand
- Headaches that start in the neck and settle behind the eye
Neck pain that has become normal for you is worth checking, because the longer a joint stays restricted the more the surrounding tissue adapts around it.
Services We Provide for Neck Pain Relief
Depending on what the exam shows, care may include:
Get Your Neck Moving Again
Your neck will not fix itself at that desk. We will look at how it actually moves, check the joints at the top of your neck as well as the ones you can feel, and tell you honestly whether we can help. Most people who come in for neck pain have had the muscle worked on plenty and the joints underneath it checked never.
We are proud to serve Arlington Heights, Mount Prospect, Palatine, Des Plaines, Elk Grove Village, Wheeling and Buffalo Grove, from an office one block from the Arlington Heights Metra station.
Book your first visit at our Arlington Heights office.