Preventing Neck Pain

Dr. Leah Nyaletey, DC • March 26, 2021

Neck pain is one of the most common conditions we see at Farrell Chiropractic Center in Jericho, VT. As we go through life we experience macrotraumas and microtraumas, and over time these traumas add up and contribute to spinal degeneration. Microtraumas are small motions that we do on a repetitive basis and macrotraumas are things such as car accidents or sports injuries that occur once in a while but leave a big “scar” on our health. Chiropractic addresses neck pain in a natural way, avoiding medication and surgery. It’s important to address neck pain sooner rather than later, which prevents you from having to do something more invasive in the future, such as surgery to eliminate the pain.




How To Prevent Neck Pain While Working From Home

This year one in four Americans are expected to be working from home. When moving your place of work from an outside office to an in-home office, many people forget to think about their home office ergonomics. This can lead to poor posture for 8 hours per day for 5 days per week. Over time this adds stress to your spine increasing tension, stiffness, pain, and promotes spinal degeneration. Here are five things that you can do to improve your home office set-up.


1) Bring your monitor to eye level. If you’re working on a laptop, consider purchasing a monitor and keyboard and connect it to your laptop. By separating the keyboard from the monitor, this allows for proper ergonomics. 

2) Consider purchasing an office chair with adjusting armrests. You want to make sure your shoulders are not up near your ears and not hanging down unsupported.

3) Make sure that your feet touch flat on the floor and your knees are bent to 90 degrees.

4) Your bottom should be as far back as possible, and your back should be resting against the chair back. This takes the pressure off of your low back.

5) Your elbows should be bent to 90 degrees so make sure your keyboard is not too high and not too low.


Sitting has been dubbed the new smoking, so besides improving your home office ergonomics you also want to make sure that you are getting up out of your chair and moving around often during your workday. This will improve blood flow from your upper body to your lower body and from your lower body to your upper body. Adding in a few exercises and stretches during your workday will help to improve your posture, decrease your joint and muscle stiffness, and reduce your body aches.




Checking Your Own Posture



What is good posture and why is it so important? When chiropractors look at the spine, we look for an S-shaped curve from the side, and from the front or the back there shouldn’t be any curve, it should appear straight. The shoulders should be level, the hips should be level, the body weight should be evenly distributed between both feet, and the ears should be right above the shoulders. It’s important to have good posture so that the muscles, ligaments, blood vessels, and nerves can function properly without having any added stress. Gravity is constantly pulling us toward the earth, which can lead to poor posture if you don’t actively do something to correct it.


 

How do you know that you have poor posture? We all carry around a smartphone with a pretty awesome camera these days, so why not put that camera to good use and check your posture with it? Did you know that for every inch that your head is translated forward it adds 10 pounds of weight to your cervical spine? Over time that extra weight can lead to degeneration in your spine, which can lead to symptoms of pain, numbness, muscle weakness and tingling into your arms and hands. This forward head posture can also put added stress on the muscles in the neck and can cause what we call cervicogenic headaches. Chiropractors are trained professionals who assess and correct any misalignments in the spine which helps to improve your posture and slows down degeneration in your spine.

 


Here is a quick way to see if you need some help to improve your posture. Take a picture of yourself from the side making sure to include your ear and the top of your shoulder. If you have a lot of hair, make sure to pull it back and out of the way so that your ear is visible. Now take a selfie from the front making sure to get your head and your shoulders in the frame. If your ear is more forward than your shoulder, or your head looks tilted from the front view, then it's time to give us a call and have one of our doctors assess you for spinal misalignments to prevent further degeneration of your spine and your overall health. Give it a try, your future self will thank you for it!

 

Check out our video below to see how to take some selfies to check your posture.

 




Now you know how to set up your home office and how to check your own posture. It’s starting to make some sense as to why your parents always told you to “sit up straight”, and if you know better, you do better.

 

If you’ve been dealing with neck pain for a while now and would like to speak with one of our doctors about it, click here to find a time that works for you or give us a call at 802-899-9991.

A Family Centered Practice

By Dr. Leah Nyaletey DC • February 24, 2022
It is no secret that parents are under a lot of stress these days. Being a new Mom myself, I know firsthand how difficult it is to find childcare when both parents have full-time careers.

Better Sleep and Fewer Headaches

By Dr. Leah Nyaletey, DC • March 26, 2021
Tech Neck Most smartphones now come with software that keeps track of how many hours per day and per week you’re spending on your smart device. How many hours are you spending on your smart device? Tech companies want you to be constantly on your smartphone and always trying to catch your attention and they are really good at achieving this. If you find yourself spending too much time on your device, try turning it off for a few hours and going outside instead. Fresh air and sunshine can do wonders to improve your health and overall sense of well-being. Have you noticed that after a while of mindlessly scrolling that your posture is worse than when you first started that scrolling session? Over time your head translates forward which puts more tension and stress on the bones in your neck and can speed up spinal degeneration. That same forward head posture can put tension in the muscles that support the neck creating knots that cause you pain. As you're scrolling through your day be mindful of your posture. Try to always make sure that your smart device is at or close to eye level. Sit up straight and bring your shoulders back and down. If you notice your child’s posture looking less than superb, try making a game out of who can keep the best posture for the longest. As for the knots that have built up in your neck and shoulder muscles, we have a helpful and easy way to loosen those up. Take a tennis ball and a hard surface, preferably the floor or a wall if you can’t get down on the floor easily. Place the tennis ball on the muscle knot. Now lay back onto the tennis ball and stay on that knot until it melts away. Keep doing this and moving around to release different knots in your muscles. The muscle tension will keep coming back until your chiropractor fixes the misalignments in your spine, which will improve your posture over time. Make an appointment with one of our chiropractors today. Your future self will thank you!

Surprising Causes of Neck Pain

By Dr. Leah Nyaletey, DC • March 26, 2021
Jaw Pain Related to Neck Pain Sometimes neck pain can correlate with jaw pain. Have you noticed that your jaw pops or clicks when you’re chewing, yawning or even talking? Do you experience jaw pain or tightness during or after a routine dental visit? Did you know that chiropractic can help reduce jaw pain? Your jaw has a joint on both sides of your face, which can get misaligned through physical traumas such as sports injuries or car accidents, or in the form of chemical traumas from emotional or mental stress. These traumas can cause a condition called TMD or temporal mandibular dysfunction. Your chiropractor will first assess the cause of your TMD. Most cases of TMD respond well to conservative chiropractic care. Your chiropractor can adjust your jaw, just like the bones in your spine, either by hand or with an instrument. You may be wondering; how can I prevent jaw pain? One of the things you can do is to avoid chewing gum for long periods of time. Chewing gum can exacerbate problems with misaligned jaw bones and create more stress in the muscles and ligaments attached to the jaw. Another thing you can do is to avoid resting your chin on your hand for extended periods of time. This can put pressure on the joints of the jaw and further misalign the jaw. If you grind your teeth at night, consider using a night guard. When chewing food, make sure to chew evenly on both sides of your mouth and not favor one side or the other. Consider visiting your dentist or orthodontist if your teeth don’t align when you close your mouth. This can create an imbalance in the muscles of the jaw which contributes to the TMD. Massaging the muscles of the jaw can also bring you some pain relief. There are also a set of exercises that you can do to help strengthen and reset the muscles that control the jaw, which your chiropractor can recommend for you. Watch the video below to see how to check your own jaw for misalignment.

The Amazing Healing Power of Class IV – Deep Tissue Laser Therapy. 

By David Claghorn • October 17, 2018
FARRELL CHIROPRACTIC CENTER OFFERS CLASS IV – DEEP TISSUE LASER THERAPY | THE NORTH COUNTRY'S EXCLUSIVE CLASS IV – DEEP TISSUE LASER THERAPY PROVIDER.

Improve Focus by Walking Into Wellness. 

By David Claghorn • July 9, 2018
Improving Focus with Chiropractic Care and a Daily Routine.