Sometimes, neck pain disappears in a few days, and you go on as if you never had a problem. But if your neck pain sticks around or is severe, it’s a sign that you have an underlying injury or disease that needs treatment.
If you experience serious or chronic neck pain, Heath Hancock, DC of Hancock Chiropractic in Salina, Kansas, urges you to promptly schedule an exam. Ignoring neck pain and putting off treatment only gives the source of your pain time to worsen, potentially leading to chronic pain and complications.
The most common causes of neck pain are strained muscles and compressed nerves, but there are several other causes.
Your neck is especially vulnerable to soft tissue injuries that pull, stretch, or tear the muscles and ligaments. These tissues are easily injured during athletic activities and throughout everyday life.
Bending your head while using electronics, poor posture, and sleeping in the wrong position can all contribute to neck pain.
A whiplash injury pulls your neck muscles to be included under “strained muscles.” Yet whiplash injuries can do more than strain soft tissues.
Depending on the severity of the trauma, the forces of your head snapping back and forth can also damage nerves, affect the vertebrae, and cause widespread complications.
As you age, changes occur in the vertebrae and discs in your neck. These changes lead to conditions such as herniated discs, facet joint arthritis, degenerative disc disease, and spinal stenosis. Degenerative conditions affecting your neck frequently pinch the spinal nerves.
When your neck pain doesn’t improve, and you choose to ignore the problems, you can end up facing one of the following consequences:
As we've already implied, one of the most significant risks of ignoring neck pain is that a small problem can get significantly worse. Even if you don’t suffer an injury, you could be headed for serious problems.
The soft tissues naturally develop tiny tears when you make the same neck movements every day. At first, the pain can be mild and easy to ignore. Those microtears get larger as you keep moving your neck, and inflammation develops. You end up with serious pain and stiffness.
Ongoing pain has a long-term impact on your central nervous system. Untreated pain triggers changes in the nerves that carry pain messages, making them hypersensitive. As a result, you keep feeling chronic pain even after the problem that initially caused your acute pain heals.
When the cause of your neck pain also pinches the nerves, you can have sharp nerve pain in your neck, as well as arm pain and symptoms like tingling or numbness that go down your arm and into your hand.
Without treatment, your arm muscles can weaken, and you can lose grip strength or fine motor control.
Your neck shares space with muscles and nerves that affect your face, jaw, and head. Even an everyday neck strain can lead to a headache and limited movement.
More severe neck injuries result in a host of complications, including:
The sooner you get an accurate diagnosis and treatment, the better your chances of preventing complications.
If you have neck pain, don’t wait to schedule an appointment. Visit Dr. Hancock at Smoky Hill Chiropractic today. Call the office at (785) 262-8276 or request an appointment online.
