Determining the Cause of Neck Pain in Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY

Hey, I’m Dr. Dan from Vibrant Chiropractic Care in Dumbo, Brooklyn, New York. You know, one of the big things that people ask when they come into the office is what’s causing my neck pain. 

What brought it about, because it’s not always obvious, you know, through some trauma or accident, or strain that the neck pain arises from or came about from. So one of the things that we do in order to assess that is, we want to check for proper alignment of the spine, spinal bones. And there’s two factors to that. So we want the straight up and down, we also want to see a nice curve or reverse C shaped curve in the neck. Because if the neck has been straightened out from tech, or poor posture, or bad sleeping positions, that can add more strain to the nerve to the neck. So we do want to see that good curve. And we do detailed postural analysis for that as well.

The next thing that we look for when it comes to what’s causing the neck pain is we want to look at the muscles.

And we want to feel what’s going on with the muscles. Because sometimes they can be tighter on one side, or actually have knots or trigger points that actually start to press or add extra irritation to the nerves. One of the things that we use to evaluate that is to have proper range of motion, we want to see if you can turn your head in all the different ways equally one way to the other. And that gives us a good indication if there’s anything that’s dysfunctional, or not working properly. 

The last thing in the part that we never want to see our patients get to is when the disc actually starts to get involved. 

Now the disc is that “shock absorber” that allows all this movement …this wonderful movement … that our spines are designed to do. They also help maintain the spaces between the bones, so that there’s good space for the nerves to do their job. But if there’s been dysfunction, or something has creeped out of place, or that there’s been extra traumas that have jam things at a place, that can actually start to close the fibers of the distance, generate or break down. And when that occurs, there’s something inside of this called the nucleus – which is a gel – that can start to displace and that can actually start to push into the spaces where the nerves are, which is not good and something that should be avoided at all costs. 

In fact, it’s always best to get to the heart of the problem sooner than later. So if you know anybody that’s experiencing any type of dysfunction, or not able to turn their neck, send them a link to this video. We’re happy to help them!