It’s Afternoon: Had Enough of Your Eight-Pound Head?
Here’s how most of our patients fix this problem:
- Unload (lie down for ten minutes every chance you get after work and on off-days). That gets the weight of your head off of inflamed tissues much like sitting down gets your body weight off of an inflamed knee. As your neck heals over time, it can tolerate longer and longer periods without your having to lie down.
- Repeated movements in a pain-free zone. Joints receive circulation through movement. Leave your joints still and inflammation just sits there. Most patients do the three movements listed below twice per day, 50 times each. Yes, that’s 100 repetitions of each per day! And most work up to 200 repetitions per day—if their neck will tolerate it. It’s key that you stay in a pain-free zone of movement, meaning no pinch or pull anywhere while doing them. Shoot for doing this regimen for eight weeks to give your neck time to heal. Here are the movements that should target all of the joints up and down your neck:
- Rotation (moving head from left to right, like shaking your head “No”)
- Slight chin up/down movement (like nodding your head “Yes”)
- Jutting chin out (we call it “the chicken movement”)—like the movement you do when smelling a flower. I’d skip this last movement if you have a history of disc problems in your neck that worsen when you look down.
- Consistently relax your neck and upper shoulder (“trap”) muscles. This is best accomplished with 15 minutes of focused breathing (“diaphragmatic breathing”/“soft belly”) to calm down your central nervous system.
- Fix your posture. Try sitting up straighter, perhaps putting something behind your back to push it forward in your car and at work and home—a towel roll, throw pillow, etc. The idea is to keep your eight-pound head over your center of gravity so that your neck structures can support it without excess muscle activity. When your head glides out forward of your body (which happens when you sit in the shape of the letter “C”), the muscles have to work overtime to hold it out there in space.
- Nutritional supplements. Give glucosamine a try, if you’re not allergic to it. Wal-Mart sells a gel-coated version by Schiff that’s relatively inexpensive and goes down easier than the “swallowing chalk” versions out there. Shoot for 2000 mg/day and give it at least a full eight-week trial. You’re trying to repair joint damage that’s likely been sitting stagnant for years.
Advertisement
