Thursday 23 August 2012

Neck pain self help

Well the neck pain cases are still rolling in. Here's a couple of simple things you can do if you are also someone who's suffering from neck and shoulder pain.
Firstly try to take notice of what aggravates the pain whether that be movement in a certain direction, worse on a cold day, worse when you are lying down and better when you are standing or sitting, worse when you apply pressure to the area.
What makes it feel better ? nothing ? applying pressure ?, maybe applying heat or cold ?
Avoid what aggravates it do more of what makes it feel better. This in itself may sound silly but may surprise you how it can speed up the healing process. It's not always advisable to think that you can just work through it, it all comes down to a matter of degree.

Try these for stiffness in your neck sore shoulders or just plain tiredness.

Just bring your arm across the front of your body placing your hand on the top your shoulder about midway between your neck and the tip of your shoulder, there is generally a sensitive point there. Apply pressure with your middle finger as you elevate your shoulder, breathe in as you are doing it, holing your shoulder in the elevated position 3 seconds then relax your shoulders suddenly. repeat 2 or 3 times.





 Bring both hands up behind the back of your head,
Run your thumbs up the back of your neck till you come to the edge of the bone at the base of your skull
where are two slight hollows let your thumbs slide into these up to the edge of the bone at the base of your skull.
While applying light pressure to these points move your head back and forward, side to side and then rotate it . This will help to relieve tension in your head, neck and shoulders. These points are also very good if you have headache, sore eyes, tiredness, light headed.

 Hope these help, give it a try. More help here

Monday 13 August 2012

Trigger points for relief

In the last couple of posts I have been talking quite a bit about neck and shoulder pain as this is something I get a lot in the clinic and I feel the more everyone understand the process of how it comes about hopefully you will learn how you can undo the process.

One way many therapists will treat not only neck and shoulder pain but also pain in other areas of the body is by using trigger points. These points will often appear in muscle areas adjacent to or sometimes quite a distance from the actual region of pain. For shoulder pain for example these points may appear in the forearm upper arm chest or further down the back. this will vary depending on the pain or injury region.

If the therapist does acupuncture these points can be needled but if you are wanting to give yourself a little self help and find a point that you find is very sensitive or even painful to the touch but is away from the site of injury try applying sustained pressure to the point. The pain can be reasonably intense to begin with but should diminish with continued application of pressure to the point.
In many cases assuming you have found the right spot the pain at that spot will diminish and you will feel relief quite quickly at the injury site.

Remember sustained pressure produces the best results with trigger points

As you can see in the diagram to the right the shaded area shows the area of pain, not only in the upper arm but also in the lower arm below the elbow.
In this case the trigger point is shown to be the triangle on the lower part of the shoulder blade.

So next time you have shoulder or neck pain or something like tennis or golfers elbow, repetitive strain injury, or even headache give it a try it usually works well.

You can read more about improving your body balance here