How To Treat Neck Pain With Trigger Point Therapy
Why to do we get neck pain and what they called by medical professionals?
Neck pain is common, with a 1-year incidence rate of 11% to 18% in the general population. Neck pain can present with other symptoms including headaches, facial pain, shoulder pain, and arm pain.
Trigger points or muscle “knots” are sensitive spots in soft tissue, and too many of them is “myofascial pain syndrome.” They may be a major factor in back and neck pain, as a cause, a complication, or a bit of both. The spots are painful on compression and can produce referred pain, referred tenderness, motor dysfunction, and autonomic phenomena.
Reasons for this pain:
- Poor posture.
- Sitting at a desk looking at a computer screen for extended periods of time.
- Poor sleeping position (i.e. on your stomach or with your head positioned above shoulder level).
- Slips and falls.
- Car accidents (i.e. whiplash).
- Sporting accidents (i.e. hits in hockey and football).
- Stress and anxiety
Other medical conditions
- Herniated disc in the cervical spine.
- Degenerative disc disease of the cervical spine.
- Cervical osteoarthritis.
- Infections (i.e. osteomyelitis, meningitis).
- Rheumatoid arthritis.
Ways to get rid of this pain:
- Trigger point therapy mostly consists of rubbing and pressing on trigger points which can feel like an amazing relief.
- Stretching exercises for neck and shoulder
- Normal movements of the neck
- Few repetitions of Chin tucking exercises for every 30 mins if you working for a long time
- Posture correction exercises like forward neck correction
Self-trigger point release (as per your physiotherapist advice)
- Self-massages of neck -using your fingertips gently rub the trigger point in a circular motion, follow this by applying firm pressure, directly on the trigger point, for approximately 1 minute
- Using the foam roller - It’s a safe and relatively easy exercise that puts pressure on the trigger point, helping it to release.
- Tennis ball -the goal of a massage ball is to apply pressure to a trigger point by essentially trapping it between your body and something else, such as the wall or floor.
