How to Deal with Neck Pain in Detroit Michigan
How to Deal with Neck Pain in Detroit Michigan
A common musculoskeletal issue is “text neck” where we look down at our devices like tablets, phones, and computers throughout the day. This can stretch the muscles at the base of your skull and cause those muscles to spasm when they get over stretched.
My favorite modality for treating text neck is about repositioning our bodies and stretching our neck muscles gently twice daily. These twice daily stretches will keep your neck muscles loose and diminish spasming over time. The more consistent you can be with stretching, the better your improvement.
If your symptoms persist - if you have continued neck muscle spasming, you can try medications like NSAIDS or muscle relaxants. Of course, talk to your doctor before you use these medications to make sure that they don’t cause any stomach irritation or kidney damage.
It would be reasonable to try Ibuprofen 600 mg if you experience neck muscle spasms that cannot be controlled or that cause pain. Ibuprofen is an NSAID.
An alternative would be to take Flexeril (Cyclobenzaprine) 10 mg 1 hour prior to bed time - this is a prescription medication so please consult with your physician before using a medication like this. Cyclobenzaprine is a muscle relaxant and patients get relief when they use this medication as it relaxes skeletal muscles. But it cannot be taken within 8 hours of driving or operating heavy machinery as it causes drowsiness in some patients, so we have our patients take the medication 1 hour prior to bedtime.
Another alternative to neck pain treatment is osteopathic manual therapy (OMT) that would be given by an osteopathic doctor (a D.O.). These treatments take 15 minutes to 30 minutes and they can focus on relaxing/manually stretching the muscles in the neck. Our physician at our office, Dr. Raquel Orlich specializes in this type of therapy.
A combination of the above modalities would reduce the muscle spasms that you’re experiencing in your neck.
Thanks for reading and watching,
-Dr. Paul Thomas