There are a lot of reasons that might cause you to feel neck pain and most of it might be just a case of a stiff neck, however, if you are doing any of the following things in excess, it can lead to some severely uncomfortable neck pain.
Following are some of the main reasons as to why you are facing severe neck pain:
Too much texting!
One of the leading causes of neck pain is bad posture. The more time you are on your phone glued to the screen, the more your head is pulled down or forward and this means that your lower back vertebrae have to go in overtime to hold your head in that unnatural position.
As per a recent study by Surgical Technology International, even a tilt of 15-degree in the head can add up to 27 pounds of pressure. With the increasing use of mobiles and laptops, this stress keeps adding up.
The muscles in your upper back are also stressed because they have to balance the movement of your head.
You can either cut down on the time you spend on your phones or stay in an upright position while using your phone which would mean bringing the phone to your eye level instead of leaning toward the device. The same goes for people spending too much time on their desks.
You’re stressed!
Robert Gotlin, DO, Director of orthopaedic and sports rehab at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City stated that, as stress increased, he would see a lot more patients with pain in their necks.
He said, every year around the time for tax, the number of people with neck pain increased, especially the Wall Street types in New York. This clearly means that stress can cause severe neck pain as well. One of the body’s default reactions to stress is muscle tension.
You need to learn where your stress is coming from and try to relax for your neck pain to go away. You can take up a Yoga class or you can start practising meditation in order to relax.
You can also start breathing exercises whenever you are stressed and breath in positivity and exhale the stress. Here are some ways to get rid of neck pain which is caused by stress.
Didn’t sleep properly
You need to keep your neck in an as natural position as you can while sleeping if you want to wake up in the morning without the neck pain.
Physical therapist Bill Hartman, a sports medicine advisor told a magazine that you need to avoid all sleeping positions where your head is bending way too much backward, forward, or on either side.
If you sleep on your stomach, you are automatically vulnerable to this as your head is already to the side. If you suffer from severe neck plain, Hartman suggests that you sleep on your back with a memory foam pillow which will support your neck and you will surely see the results in a couple of days.
You are smoking
Consider the pain in your neck just one more reason added to thousands to quit smoking. Smoking is known to accelerate degenerative disc disease.
The chemicals that are present in the cigarettes hardens your arteries which in turn results in less blood supplied to the discs and bones.
This will starve the bones in your neck for nutrients. There are a lot of ad consequences to smoking, add this to the list and please try to quit as early as possible.
Your purse has everything in it!
Majority of the women do not realize the toll their completely filled purse has on their shoulders and neck muscles.
Robert Hayden, the founder of the Iris Chiropractic Center in Atlanta told in an interview that, he has actually weighed the purse of women and shown them exactly how much weight they are carrying.
Your body is bound to adapt to the extra weight by actually compromising its natural posture. The arm which has your purse hanging from is not going to move freely, this means the other arm is making up for the movement and this imbalance creates great strain on your neck and the back.
In order to avoid the imbalance, you should only carry what is necessary and keep switching shoulders in order to maintain balance.
