Finding Natural Relief for Neck Pain After a Whiplash Injury

Our San Diego Upper Cervical Chiropractors, Dr. Payton and Dr. Dawn, are neck specialists that are extensively trained to find abnormalities within your neck that are responsible for causing neck pain. Our doctors have additional educational training in the neck and utilize gentle procedures that help eliminate pain fast and efficiently without any cracking or twisting. Our procedures are gentle, precise and customized to each patient.

Whether you are suffering from chronic pain due to a whiplash injury you suffered in the past or if your pain is more recent due to the long-term effects of poor posture or a recent trauma, upper cervical chiropractic care may be able to help. Here are some of the reasons that bed rest simply is not enough after neck trauma and how upper cervical chiropractic care can help.

Even though pain can be relentless and can keep us from our daily activities, it is our body’s way of signaling to us that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. If you are looking for neck pain relief it is important to get to the underlying cause of the pain and find an effective and gentle way to correct what is wrong.

For some individuals, the pain may have seemed to have come out of nowhere! Maybe you woke up one day, and couldn’t turn your head or move your neck without severe neck pain. The pain may get worse with certain movements such as turning your head to one side or flexing your head forward or back or even with certain actions such as sneezing. Many of our patients also report that the pain travels down their arm and/or have numbness and tingling down their arms or in their fingers. Many patients also have muscle weakness in their shoulder or arm. They are often surprised to learn that the nerves in the neck that come from the cervical spine go to the shoulder, arm, and hand.

Understanding the Cause of Neck Pain

When a person is suffering from severe neck pain, they often want to know the cause or the source of the pain so they don’t continue to aggravate their condition. They wonder if their neck pain is from “sleeping funny” or a “bad pillow” OR did the pillow or ‘sleeping funny’ aggravate an underlying issue you’ve had for years? It’s important to distinguish what it is because each require different solutions. With that being said, the sooner you receive treatment, the better outcome and the sooner you will experience neck pain relief.

If the cause of your neck pain is chronic, often times it can be from a prior whiplash, a sport’s injury that occurred years ago or even a serious fall you experienced as a child. Neck pain can also be from a repetitive stress injury that you do day-in and day-out at home or at the office such as poor posture while on your phone or at your computer. Degenerative disc disease or degenerative joints can also be the source of chronic neck pain for many patients. Many of our patients are relieved to discover that after treatment, not only is their pain relieved but they also have increased range of motion that they haven’t had for years!

Taking over-the-counter pain medication may make you feel better temporarily, but is it actually correcting the cause of the problem? To receive long-term relief from pain, you need to get to the source of the problem. At Family First Chiropractic we specialize in very specific gentle adjustments to correct the root cause of the problem so you can heal naturally!

Neck Pain May Require Precision Realignment

Following a trauma such as a concussion or whiplash injury or even a sports injury, or fall you experienced as a child, neck pain is just one of the many symptoms that can spring up. The top bones in the neck play some key roles in the body and are the most vulnerable to misalignment because they are designed to be the most freely moveable joints in your body to give your head the range of motion it needs. When the top of your neck becomes misaligned more than just neck pain can occur

Here are a few reasons why:

• Facilitation of blood flow – The cervical vertebrae provide safe passage for the vertebral arteries that bring blood flow to the head. After head or neck trauma, you need to ensure that a misalignment has not occurred which can slow this free flow of blood and oxygen.

• The brainstem location- The brainstem is located at the top of the cervical spine. Seventy eight trillion nerve fibers pass through the C1 level and continue on to all the different regions of your body such as your cells, tissues, muscles and organs. You can think of your brainstem as the fuse box for all the brain to body communication. Interference to the messages that pass through this region can have a devastating consequences to your health and wellbeing. It is also where injuries to your spine have the most neurological impact.

• Balancing the head – An accident or injury can leave you misaligned or without your head on straight.

When the atlas or C1 vertebrae, becomes misaligned, the body makes changes to the surrounding soft tissue to keep the eyes level with the horizon. The changes to the neck can lead to pain, stiffness, and inflammation.

Drug-Free Treatment for Neck Pain Relief:

The first step to being pain free is to obtain a proper and thorough evaluation and diagnosis. Our evaluation process takes ALL the guess work out of the equation and provides the doctors the information they need to determine a correct diagnosis and treatment options. Since there are many causes of neck pain, in order to get the fastest results we aim to eliminate any guess work. We have to know exactly what is going on with each of our patients. Our objective tools we utilize in our San Diego practice give us the answers we need to determine if we can accept your case, and if so, how to quickly get you out of pain. We have many other healthcare providers we work and refer to if a patient would be better suited for a different treatment than what we offer. Once we accept a case, we use 3D images to measure down to a quarter of a degree any misalignments within the spine, so we know exactly how to correct and align the vertebrae and adjust you without any cracking, twisting or popping of the spine. Once we have our specific analysis completed, we will come up with a long term strategy to not only get you out of pain, but to prevent the pain from interfering with your life any longer.

Neck Pain Relief in Ranch Bernardo, San Diego

If you are suffering from neck pain in the San Diego area, then Family First Chiropractic can help. We offer a specific form of chiropractic called upper cervical that focuses on the top two bones in the neck. Precise measurements and gentle adjustments give your body the time it needs to heal so the soft tissue of your neck can stabilize. Call 858-279-1012 today to request an appointment.