There are a lot of causes for neck pain. One common cause of neck pain is actually stress. There are actually a few different types of stress that can affect the neck. We will focus on three.
1. Physical Stress: This is the most common type of stress that we think of when thinking of neck pain. Physical stress includes things such as poor posture, car accident trauma, or falling asleep in a strange position. A lot of times physical stress can quickly be identified with neck pain because you can physically see where the problem lies, such as whiplash from a car accident.
Physical stress results a lot of time to how your muscles handle physical movements as well. There can be muscle tightening or loss of muscle tone. Both things can cause problems with the joints and discs in the neck.
2. Chemical Stress: Chemical Stress is caused by things that you eat or breathe. There are things in the air, medications you take, preservatives in food that can cause chemical stress in your body. Chemical stressors can irritate the nervous system of your body and result in neck pain.
3. Emotional Stress: Unlike the other two, emotional stress is less easily gauged. It isn’t a tangible object that you can measure for neck pain. However, there are still countless studies that show that emotional stress can cause directly affect the health of the body.
Emotional stress can be anything that is causing you to feel overwhelmed. Whether its being stressed out at work, being angry with a family member, or being nervous about finances, emotional stress can leak over to your physical wellbeing. Stress causes tension in the body, which can directly affect areas of the body that are already overworked or weakened. This is one of the main reasons why the back and neck tend to be affected most often.
Stress can create nerve interferences that can cause neck pain in the body. The best way to treat neck pain is to heal the neck naturally. It may seem like taking a pain reliever like acetaminophen is the easiest and most convenient option, but there are actually much more effective treatments out there that will actually treat the underlying neck issue, not just temporarily dull the pain in your neck.
Your chiropractor can help you correct the problem and help you with a non-invasive, medication-free approach. While you might not be able to be stress-free all the time, there are great exercises and treatments out there to help with stress. Talk to your chiropractor and see what treatment options he or she recommends for physical, chemical and emotional stress to help with your neck pain. You might be surprised that many of these things are quick and easy things that you can accomplish with out too much effort on your part, and it can make a world of difference with your neck pain.