As Chicagoans and Lincoln Parkers enter the holiday season, the holiday season can be stressful as you navigate holiday parties, end of year obligations at your job, and possibly any travel to visit family.  With the increased stress of these elements can bring about neck pain, upper back pain, and headaches, just to name a few.  It is important to still remain active and keep the spine and non-spinal areas conditioned as not working out can decondition and weaken your spine leading to injury.  Neck pain, particularly, can cause great distress to being able to do your job, exercise, and do simple daily activities.  Neck pain can vary in its intensity, symptoms  (achy, sharp, tight, and stiff for example), and type of injury (traumatic, repetitive use), but it can be helped with chiropractic care.  Medical doctors, including physical therapists, largely do not trust chiropractors as they both think that we could hurt someone with a neck adjustment.  This article will show how safe neck manipulation and the positive impact it can have on both your neck pain and function when visiting a chiropractor.

When visiting a chiropractor for next pain (or possibly prior to your visit), it is important to ask questions about what kind of treatment one may provide, including therapies, to understand better what may be done upon your initial visit.  Typically, a thorough consultation about your neck injury followed by a detailed exam, will allow the chiropractor to discover and learn more about your injury to better help you.  Upon completing your exam and history, the chiropractor will go over treatment options, length of care, cost, and if they can help you.  If it is determined that they can help you, understanding how chiropractic care will impact your neck pain will be necessary toward helping you reduce your pain, inflammation, and increasing your movement.  Obtaining informed consent about the possible risks, benefits, and alternatives are important too as they need to be addressed in the initial patient paperwork and in the office.  This creates an environment where the patient is well informed and can move forward with chiropractic adjustments to one’s neck. The most common complaints following a chiropractic adjustment involve neck stiffness, achiness, and/or tightness in the neck and often does not last longer than 48 hours (this is what I tell my patients whether they have had chiropractic treatment previously or not)

The data behind chiropractic manipulation for one’s neck and its safety is well documented over the years in well-published journals. In the journal, “Spine”, a study back in October 2007 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17906581/), received treatment outcomes of almost 20,000 patients, and information was gathered at the time of treatment and 7 days post-treatment reporting no adverse events from chiropractic manipulation. Another study titled, “Cervical Spine Manipulation and Causation of Cervical Artery Dissection: A Review of 10 Case reports” (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11192210/), provided no convincing evidence of the link between chiropractic manipulation and Cervical artery dissection (which is where a tearing of the neck artery occurs).  There are many articles showing that chiropractic manipulation to the neck is safe, but proper care and attention to detail still needs to occur to allow you to heal and feel better.  As in any medical procedure, there is always a risk (another example would be taking prescribed medication and its side effects) and this risk needs explanation from the chiropractor before treatment is performed to ensure compliance and safety.

When the proper steps are taken to ensure one’s health and safety, it builds trust and support to allow the chiropractor to improve your neck pain.  It allows one to be at more ease knowing that they are the focus, not what the doctor thinks.  Make sure you ask enough questions to the chiropractor to feel comfortable to get the help for your neck pain today.