Are you truly a pain in the neck? Have you ever had that really bad pain in your neck or arm before? You know, you can’t sit for long, you can’t sleep, you can’t work. Neck pain can effect your whole quality of life—and when you are experiencing it, you might feel like you will never get relief. But with the right treatment, education, exercise and life style modifications, you can live without that neck and arm pain.
At Flaherty Phsyical Therapy, we approach the treatment of neck and arm pain in four moving parts: pain management, activity modification, postural correction and return to fitness/life.
PAIN MANAGEMENT. Most patients that start in Physical Therapy (PT) come for three reasons: 1.) Pain. 2.) The inability to do what they want, and 3.) Unhappiness due to discomfort. We take our first few weeks and focus on reducing pain through our manual techniques, breathing exercises and general stretching. Stress can be a big factor in recovery, so we talk about positions of comfort and how breathing can help to reduce stress in the body. We also talk about pain—the fact that it is totally normal, and about how recovery is impacted by the way that your body responds to pain. Finally, our therapists take the time to learn about each client’s needs and priorities so that we can get them feeling better as soon as possible.
ACTIVITY MODIFICATION. This is where the movement starts. By increasing movement with daily activities, we find most symptoms start resolving within 3-5 weeks of starting PT. Many times, we start some modified activities at the same time. We help patients identify which movements are making the symptoms worse and show you how to do more of what helps and less of what hurts. This includes learning how to properly stretch and how to lift and carry without pain. Finally, we teach you how to engage your core. It’s amazing how as we get older, we lose the ability to engage our core muscles. When the core is strong, the back and neck are usually is strong.
POSTURAL CORRECTION. We generally start with your normal seated or standing posture. We like to get you thinking about what we call, “plunger posture.” Imagine a clean plunger on your head and as you walked around daily, someone was hovering above you, holding you up with that plunger. This would pull your shoulders back, hold your head up with your chin tucked in and your core engaged. Voila, you have good posture! We then spend time talking about your posture at work, driving, home, etc. Slight edge changes to improve your posture can lead to reduced years of wear and tear on your spine, body and muscles.
RETURN TO LIFE. At this point, pain is less, activity is more. Our clients learn more about what to do to stay healthy and strong through exercise and return to life activities. We keep working on encouraging better postures, better breathing and more consistency with exercises at home, at the gym or at any time in the day. This is where many who have not exercised before will learn about how to integrate exercise into their life.
At Flaherty Physical Therapy, we believe in the benefits of exercise and the positive effects it can have on your health and wellness. We also feel no one should ever suffer with neck or arm pain—regardless of how old, young, active or sedentary they may be.
To learn more, join Flaherty PT for our Neck Pain Workshop on Tuesday, February 19th from 6-7 pm in our Northborough clinic. Call 508-393-9000. You will leave with some easy to do’s at home to keep your neck healthy and strong!