The Hauntingly Easy Ways You’re Hurting Your Neck At Work
When we’re not obviously in pain, we’re often unaware of the small ways we’re injuring ourselves over time. From looking at screens to doing physical labor, your neck goes through a lot of strain during the workday. However, our Next Level Wellness team wants you to know that there are ways to prevent and treat your injuries.
Prevention
If you have a job that consists of being on a computer all day, make sure that you keep it at eye level. This will keep your spine and shoulders aligned so that you’re not looking down and straining the muscles in your neck. The same goes for using your phone. Any time you’re texting, emailing, or scrolling through Instagram, take a moment to notice how you’re sitting. Most of us are hunched over or have our heads completely pointed down. Not only does this affect your neck, but it affects your back as well. Be sure to hold your phone higher so that you’re looking at it as straight on as possible.
Another mistake people often make is carrying a bag on one side of their body all of the time. By doing this, you can cause your shoulders to become uneven which puts strain on your neck. To help remedy this, try to lighten your load by only packing essentials and make an effort to keep your shoulders level.
Exercises
To strengthen your neck muscles, do a mixture of side-to-side head rotations, neck rolls, and head nods. Essentially, you’ll be moving your head in all directions to help work all of your neck muscles. It will also help loosen up any muscles that have become stiff from being in the same position for too long. Doing these exercises a few times a day will help keep your neck strong and help you avoid an injury down the road.
F.I.T.
Fascial Integrative Treatment, or F.I.T., is an advanced soft-tissue system that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia, nerves and joints. It is a manual hands-on therapy that corrects the dysfunctions that these soft-tissues can undergo. When you are injured, scar tissue adhesions can accumulate in your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves. This kind of build up can be the result of any type of strain you put on your body, from slouching at your desk to carrying heavy objects. When this build up of scar tissue goes unaddressed, the result is pain, discomfort and lack of mobility.
By using F.I.T., our chiropractors will be able to break up these restrictive adhesions, re-instate normal tissue flexibility, and restore balance and stability to the injured area. We’ll also be able to assess and correct problems in any other area of the kinetic chain, which are often contributing factors to the problem. All of the areas of soft tissue that have become dysfunctional and are contributing to the specific injury are addressed, even if they have not yet developed pain.
Our chiropractic team of wellness doctors, Vasili Gatsinaris, DC, QME, James Kim, DC, Adam Abulghualya, DC, BS, ART and Caprice Leonard, MA, ATC specialize in chiropractic and wellness care, especially for workplace injuries. Our Irvine chiropractic office is located near John Wayne Airport, convenient for people living in Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Santa Ana and other surrounding Orange County communities.
Let our Orange County chiropractic team make a plan and treat your injury so that you are not restricted from your active lifestyle. To learn more about our variety of services or to schedule an appointment, take advantage of our Facebook new patient special and contact us or call 949-263-9003 today.