Like My Wife!!!
If you or someone you know has neck pain then this article is for you.
Most recently, I was on a business trip for a couple of days in Orlando, Florida. My daughter flew out after my meeting so we could spend some time together. We went to Disney World Animal Kingdom as well as Universal Studio.
We rode some amazing roller coasters, and then we also took a kayaking trip before heading home.
My wife came to pick us up at the airport and I noticed she couldn’t move her head very well. She was having a hard time turning to see over her shoulder to check for oncoming traffic.
When I asked what was going on, she said, “I don’t know, but you’re gonna have to work on my neck because it’s really bad”. I knew it must be hurting because she normally tries to “grind it out”.
This is very common, a lot of people we treat don’t remember any specific injury just that they started to notice some aches and pains on day.
Apparently over the last couple of days prior to her picking us up, she started to have more and more neck pain. The pain was really in her left shoulder blade area, not so much in the neck. The most intense region of pain was in that left shoulder blade.
I’ve treated her in the past for similar issues, and of course, she doesn’t follow my advice to exercise regularly, so we’ve had this recurring problem.
It’s a little difficult to treat family members in the house when you don’t have proper tables and equipment but I treated her and got her feeling about 90% better. About three or four days into treatment as she was starting to feel better. She came to me one day, she said, “now I know what happened”
One evening she was laying in bed with our toddler, Charlee, and she just jumped up or moved quickly, and when she did, she hit Judy in the chin. This caused a whiplash effect that forced her head back and to the left.
The next day she felt a little sore and it stayed sore for a couple of days, but didn’t do anything about it. Naturally while I was gone, she either slept funny or something else happened, and it really flared up her symptoms.
The pain became so bad that she couldn’t turn her head. Initially, she couldn’t remember what had happened because it seemed kind of minor at the time. This is a very common story.
Today, I want to address these three common principles that we see over and over again.
Regardless of the type of pain that our patients are having…
The first is, most people procrastinate, and that’s fairly common. Most think, okay, this is gonna get better, and for the most part, a lot of our aches and pains do start to go away over time. The question is, how much time are you going to allow to pass before it starts to get better or before you start to do something about it?
A lot of people, try to ignore the pain and they essentially just pretend or think, okay, it’s gonna go away on its own, and that’s really what my wife was trying to do.
This is what I call the biggest mistake, ignoring your pain. You’re potentially setting yourself up for larger and more costly problems in the long run. Whether it’s a financial cost or just the frustration and anguish of having pain for a long period of time.
Essentially, the faster you address the problem, the greater the chance of success, which is going to lead to your ability to return to a normal lifestyle.
The second mistake I frequently see in people with neck pain is that they try to alter their symptoms by taking some type of dangerous medication or they rush into having injections or surgery.
Now, don’t get me wrong, if you have serious muscle weakness, this may indicate a neurological problem which should be evaluated. In this case injections or surgery may be necessary, but usually not at the onset.
Usually, if you address the problem quickly, the surgery can be avoided.
It’s one thing if you’re going take some over-the-counter medications, maybe a little Tylenol or Ibuprofen, use some ice packs, things like that initially in the short term. Those are all just standard treatment protocols for an initial onset of some type of injury.
However, what happens is once that pain and inflammation start to decrease. Most people think, oh, okay, the problem itself has been taken care of and they don’t look any further.
This is why a lot of times, they end up with recurring problems. Just because the pain has gone away, it doesn’t mean that the main problem has been taken care of.
When you reduce the local inflammation, a lot of times what happens is, it doesn’t fix the root cause of the pain, and so you’re just covering it up.
So this leads to
The third point is what do most successful people do when they have neck pain and really address the problem?
I’ve come up with the 3D’s principle.
You can use this with any problem you have in life.
The first is don’t ignore it. There’s a problem, there’s something wrong, most of the time, if you just ignore it, it’s gonna fester and get worse, so you need to make sure you don’t ignore the problem.
The second is, don’t mask it, don’t try to cover it up with excessive harmful medications without truly addressing what the root cause is.
The third is you want to do something about it.
So be proactive, especially in your health, because your health is precious, just like time, you can’t get more time, so you want to make sure that the time that you have is spent with great mobility and great strength and not a lot of pain.
I heard of Chinese proverb or virtue once, it said, a sick man only has one wish, but a healthy man has a 1000 wishes. So which one are you?
So hopefully this was helpful. And trying to identify what you can do for your neck pain, remember the 3D’s, don’t ignore it, don’t mask it and do something about it.
So, If You’re Currently Living With Neck Pain, Here’s Something Just For YOU
Declare Your Own Personal Victory Over Headaches and Neck Pain Workshop! Saturday, May 1st, 10 AM
How To Resolve Your Neck Pain Before It ruins your life
The workshop is FREE but you must Register
Call Our Office NOW 817-859-6112
Seating is limited due to social distancing, only (10) seats available… so please don’t delay your registration.
ALL 10 attendees for the Neck Pain and Headache Workshop will receive a Special Report: “The Top 10 Burning Questions for Neck Pain”.
Saturday, May 1st, 10 AM
MOSS Rehabilitation Center
407 Old Springtown Rd Ste 114, Springtown, TX 76082
Call 817-859-6112 or go online to register