There are many causes of neck pain, but the ones that we see in our office most often are from trauma and repetitive stress.
The number one cause of neck pain has to be trauma-based. So, have you been in a car accident? Have you had an injury in the workplace? A sports injury?
The second most common cause of neck pain that we tend to see, if it is not trauma-based is from repetitive stress. People who work in the corporate environment essentially have to sit for a living. And, if we’re not sitting at work, it can also come from poor posture from our environment. Are we at home, spending too much time on our cell phone, on our tablets? Are we someone who has to travel a lot for work, drive, sit for a long period of time?
Repetitive stress, now, is a major factor in breaking this down, particularly with the neuromuscular skeletal issues, such as neck pain. The average American has to sit for over 14 hours a day, or spend over nine hours a day at some form of electronic device, a phone, a tablet, and a computer. Over time that poor posture just shifts the spine out of alignment. When it is out of alignment, we start to compensate. We increase pressure on the disc, the joint, the tissue, and over time that starts to break down.
If you’ve been in a trauma, then, that trauma is going to do the same thing. Just in more of an acute way. So, it is going to damage the disc, the joint, the tissue; when we’re compromised in any of those areas, then we start to break down and feel pain.
The biggest causes of neck pain that we look out for are, again, from traumas, car accidents, sports injuries, or workplace injuries, lifting, specifically. And, then, obviously, the repetitive stresses that we’ve just gone over.
