Deep neck flexor exercises – Back and neck

https://www.sprintphysio.co.uk/patient-exercises/back-and-neck/deep-neck-flexor-exercises.html

by whereistimbo • 6 years ago

190 116 6 years ago

sprintphysio.co.uk

motyar• 6 years ago

Can we get videos of these?

janmo2• 6 years ago

I neglected my sitting position for years, now I pay the price for it. Every time I turn my head it makes unpleasant cracking noises (luckily no pain), I went to the doctor who was not able help me further. Those exercise allow me to have some relief and to lessen the noise, but it's still there.

Anyone in the same situation here?

qznc• 6 years ago

I was fine until Corona home office. Apparently I'm now too old to ignore these topics. Thanks to some inspiration from https://old.reddit.com/r/flexibility/ I'm ok again but not yet as good as a year ago.

freedomben• 6 years ago

I am. Had the cracking noises for years now, sometimes with pain, but mostly it's just a discomfort that won't go away.

I do neck rolls to help sometimes but too much will cause inflammation so I'm conservative with them. Turning my head side to side regularly also seems to help with the discomfort.

I'm guessing my neck will continue to sound like breaking bones for the rest of my life though.

janmo2• 6 years ago

One of my ex-GF had this as well, she's a pianist (that's why)and for her it got away. So I guess there is hope.

cnasc• 6 years ago

Related, as a full-time keyboard jockey I have to make sure to take good care of my moneymakers. I’ve found this video of novel wrist and hand movements absolutely invaluable: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hlWgH3_0NU

dec0dedab0de• 6 years ago

One thing that really helped me with back, and neck pain, and then later with all kinds of pain, is the trigger point therapy workbook. I forget which edition I have but there are one or two newer ones since then. I used to hurt myself and be useless for a week or two, since I got the book it's been a day or two. It's basically a guide for effective self massage.

Funny side note, I learned about it from a character in a fictional book called sex drugs and blueberries, which I randomly picked up from the local section of a book store while visiting Maine about 10 years ago.

switch007• 6 years ago

I have this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trigger-Point-Therapy-Workbook-Self...

ISBN 1608824942

bproven2• 6 years ago

For neck/back pain I highly recommend strength training - specifically focused on posterior chain exercises like deadlifts, squats (if you do not have any serious preexisting injuries preventing you doing them). Even you are unable to do those a good solid barbell strenght training program can work wonders. Anecdontal for me, but I find whenever I stop training my back/neck pain comes back.

Also important to move a few times a day if you are doing the kind of sitting work most of us do. I make sure that I take a 20-30 min walk before I start working and then at least 1 more time mid-day. This also helps a lot IMO

howardr• 6 years ago

After doing moderate strength training in these areas along with core exercises as part of a cross training class (2x a week) my back pain that I’ve had for over a decade dissapeared.

polishdude20• 6 years ago

Same for me. I have this mindset now that whenever I get back pain I need to deadlift / squat it out albeit with a slightly lower weight than usual. It seems to go away every time after a few sets.

jacksonkmarley4• 6 years ago

Same for me, deadlifts and squats (with good form) kept away my lower back pain. One caveat, when I first started there was a bit of a learning curve on how to get core bracing and posture right, and bad form made my back a bit sore.

Unfortunately in the current virus situation the gym is out and my place isn't suitable for weight training. I'm starting some bodyweight exercises but they don't seem to help my back like the weight training did.

PaulHoule4• 6 years ago

The most efficient kind of exercise to relieve low back pain involve bending backwards, such as the Cobra pose in Yoga

https://www.dummies.com/health/exercise/yoga/how-to-do-the-c...

Cobra and the exercises from that book are easy to do at home but I like the bioenergetic arch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=225tAQzCVhs

because it is standing and you can do it anywhere, just please wear better clothes than the guy in that video.

lottin• 6 years ago

Yes, the squat if not done correctly can be bad for you back. Strangely I've never had a problem doing deadlifts with a degree of lumbar flexion, but I keep pinching a nerve in my lower back while doing squats.

vidarh2• 6 years ago

For squats the one thing people need to keep in mind is it requires decent hip and posterior chain flexibility before you get to anything more than moderate weights.

Especially office workers often struggle with that. Simple test: squat all the way down without a weight without lifting your heels and without falling backwards... If you can, your mobility is pretty ok. If you can't.. Well, you should fix that.

I did the mistake of squatting with poor mobility a while when I first started out, and hurt myself before figuring that out. Took just a few weeks of stretches to fix. Incidentally the same stretches (touching toes or floor, squatting and holding the position without a weight - if you can't do it at all start by holding on to something in front of you to keep you from falling) is great if sitting a lot too.

yedava• 6 years ago

I don't think 'mobility' is a factor for squats. If you think you have bad mobility, try the low bar squat where the back is more horizontal at the bottom of the squat. I have a great deal of difficulty squatting with a vertical back, but I find squatting with a more horizontal back quite natural and easy.

varrock• 6 years ago

I’d throw walking lunges in there, to; an excellent posterior chain movement that also gets your heart rate going at a healthy pace.

namanyayg2• 6 years ago

Might be unconventional, but I've noticed that _breath patterns_ and correct posture while stretching (i.e. being in a rounded neck posture while stretching probably adds to harm...)

For that, I've found this video guide to be one of the best and it feels significantly better than others. https://yogawithadriene.com/10-minute-yoga-quickie-neck-shou...

I invite any HNer to try it out and _really focus on the mindset and breathing patterns_ recommended by the guide. It's excellent, especially the part where you put the opposite hand on the ear and stretch.

aaronbrethorst2• 6 years ago

I started a yoga practice just over a year ago after I recovered from a terrible, constant series of back spasms brought on by working on my laptop on my couch for too long.

I probably did yoga for one hour 2-3 times per week on average last year, which helped me avoid a repeat of my back issues. It’s helped me improve my flexibility, muscle tone, and my awareness of my body. What I mean by that last point is that I am more immediately aware when I experience back issues, now, and I also have a clearer sense of how to move and stretch my body to fix those issues before they become worse.

Yoga is great, and really doesn’t require any special equipment. You can try out a video and get pretty far without needing to buy mats, blocks, straps, Lululemon clothes, etc.

namanyayg2• 6 years ago

That is a great point about "awareness of the body". I found that a lot of neck pain stemmed from improper neck angles while viewing my dual monitor workstation. And I would be so numb to sensation that I would stay in the incorrect pose for hours, leading to pain when I got up from work.

After some months of yoga, I am much more clearly able to recognise within minutes as soon as my neck is in any improper angle and fix it rather than letting it pain me after hours

melling2• 6 years ago

While we certainly need to take care of our bodies, it would be helpful if we reinvented computers enough so we aren’t hunched over our computers all day.

I sit relaxed with a tablet in my lap and use an Apple Pencil when possible.

Of course, it’s not a great productivity device but at least it’s a slightly different position.

Voice, cameras or radar for gestures, etc could be used to augment computing devices.

4 hours a day with a keyboard and the rest standing or sitting back using a different method of interface would be better.

Soli everywhere?

https://atap.google.com/soli/

dahart4• 6 years ago

If I could write code and attend meetings while I walk around, I’d be out walking and hiking all day. I’m imagining some fantasy where I could wear lightweight AR sunglasses and use gestures and/or voice control and somehow be able to do everything I do with my desktop. I’m not sure it’s realistic even ten years from now, but I’m also not sure this kind of setup is out of reach either. I use standing & treadmill desks on and off. They’re good for taking care of my body, but take effort to use consistently, and have some tradeoffs.

melling2• 6 years ago

Wolfram has his “walking desks”

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/04/stephen-wolfram-explains-h...

I like the one of him walking outside. The problem is he’s still using a keyboard.

mordymoop2• 6 years ago

Doing these gives me a 100% guaranteed 3 day long headache.

renw0rp3• 6 years ago

I started having problems with my elbow and two (when looking at my palm) innermost fingers (pinky and ring fingers). At the beginning I thought it's tennis elbow, but then started having problems with my neck as well and getting dizzy (vertigo, headache and sometimes nausea) when lying down and getting up from the bed. I've noticed that that happens most when my head is on flat surface and even more when it reclines back (when a physiotherapist lowered my head below the flat surface of the bed I was ling on). Did anyone experience something like this or has any advice?

I did have an ultrasound and EMG (electromyography) done which did not show any problems in my elbow.

I do exercise for my neck now and hope that will help... I might add some exercises from the OP to my routine.

PS. Funnily my problems (at the beginning it was only elbow and fingers) started during lockdown, when I finally started doing yoga-type exercises and I felt like I'm getting better at it (I think it's just coincidence, not causation though).

jacksonkmarley4• 6 years ago

Curious about this, what was the issue with your fingers? Pain or numbness?

renw0rp3• 6 years ago

feeling weaker grip and sensations leading sometimes to clumsiness. I would describe it as slight numbness (in the sense of weaker sensations and a weird, kind of tingly feeling in the fingers). It was becoming a proper numbness when using phone/tablet for prolonged periods, but now I try to avoid doing that.

I have similar tingly sensation in my elbow, and in the worst time I actually woke up at night with pain in the elbow.

It's sometimes better, sometimes worse, and I'm trying what else (other than giving up my job and using computer) can I do to help relieve this issues. COVID pandemic is not helping either getting proper medical attention.

mike_h• 6 years ago

Elbow plus those two fingers implicates ulnar nerve, which passes from your lower neck (C8 and T1 vertebrae), through your clavicle and behind your elbow, into pinky and ring finger. If it gets entrapped by tight tissue anywhere on the way down (look up “thoracic outlet syndrome” for example), it can cause issues below, e.g. in elbow and those two fingers. For the neck and dizziness I forget how things work, e.g. if it means the the problem is rooted in your neck / spine area or if the neck symptoms could also be rooted lower further along the nerve. It could all be due to mobility problems along the same nerve, or if you’ve been hunching at a computer for a while, there could be additional issues in the neck with other nerves or circulation.

This is the kind of thing physical therapists and chiropractors work on, but at least when I went through it a decade ago, it was really hard to find one who could troubleshoot the problem and reason about the body vs. going by a lookup table of symptoms and approved treatments.

The things that helped me were tissue-loosening massage in the neck, shoulder, and upper rib area. It finally went away one day when the therapist loosened my top rib enough to stop impinging on the nerve. Just to give you an example of how counterintuitive it can be.

As a general cheat sheet, be thinking about places nerves could get impinged from vertebrae through wrist. Tight muscles, tissue locking you into certain postures, vertebral misalignment.

I bet there’s more info on reddit and places like that now, but one book that used to be good for modeling the whole system was called “It’s not carpal tunnel syndrome”. Also look up trigger point therapy. During pandemic you may be more on your own so be aware of self-massage tools like Theracane. Posture work may also help, and walking / general cardio fitness.

mancerayder15• 6 years ago

Someone below wrote, " Doing these gives me a 100% guaranteed 3 day long headache. "

I have something like this and I've spent many years trying to figure it out. One MRI (which showed nada), three or four doctors, several years of physical therapy, and a personal trainer who studied the problem later, and I am concluding the following:

- I have loosey goosey joints more than other people. It's not extreme but enough.

- I have usage of computers that far exceeds 90% of the population (12+ hours a day).

- When the joints are loose, things get inflamed. When tendons and the joint structures get inflamed, the bodies responds protectively by tightening (turning on) stabilizer muscles

- Stabilizer muscles can be weak and thus get overworked, causing spasms and other issues

- Tight muscles can cause imbalances, further causing a chain reaction of more inflammation and spasms

I've been doing weightlifting (not bodybuilding which you should not do if you value your body long-term! Strength Training and a bit of Olympic Weightlifting) for a number of years. I've been analyzing and thinking about posture for years. I'm typing this on a standing desk at home that has a monitor with an articulating arm (similar setup at work). I use left and right mice alternating. I sit and stand, alternating. I do neck stretches every morning and some isometric neck stuff. I suspect part of my problem is shoulder mobility so I also do daily scapular work.

Yet. I suffer from neck pain every few days with flare-ups that last days and sometimes go away for a week or two.

Medicine: You Suck! We can send robots to Mars and make self-driving cars, but due to the incoherence of modern medicine, I spend hours watching Yoga and PT videos and end up memorizing the names of bones and joints and physiological movements. And I suffer. Fuck you, Medicine!

Glad I got that off my chest.

newsclues3• 6 years ago

Got hit by a car and I’ve concluded doctors are largely a decade or more out of date on a lot of things, especially diet and non-obvious injuries.

mancerayder15• 6 years ago

I feel like medicine teaches you the facts - the hip bone is connected to the, leg bone - but in terms of 'troubleshooting skills', there is something deeply missing.

AlwaysRock• 6 years ago

Changing my diet (cutting bread and booze) helped my terrible back and neck more than several years of PT and doctors did.

bbatha• 6 years ago

It’s sort of built into the profession: medical practice is inherently little-c conservative. Doctors are trained throughly to practice the precautionary principle because it’s easier to cause more harm. Often with good reason imagine you’re a surgeon and a new procedure comes out that’s 92% effective and the one you learned in school and have hundreds of hours of practice in is 89% effective. That boost is worth it in theory but are you going to risk a few patients while you learn it along the way? That benefit needs to be much larger in the aggregate. This is also assuming it’s something reach FDA certification, etc. scientific research is often a decade ahead of the market any way in any field.

Then there’s also the reality that doctors at least in the US are incredibly over worked and keeping up with a wide variety of scientific literature is just not practical. This is coupled to an increased specialization in medicine may mean cross-over research from different specialities may not filter into your desk.

dfsegoat2• 6 years ago

“I have usage of computers that far exceeds 90% of the population (12+ hours a day).”

Pre-pandemic, I trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu 5-6x per week - where people are trying to crank on my neck constantly. Your neck gets incredibly thick and strong as a result.

Even with that, I can say that NOTHING sets off my neck pain like 10+ hours at my computer.

mancerayder15• 6 years ago

Would you say a stronger neck reduces problems from the PC all day long?

dilyevsky• 6 years ago

Same with climbing/deadlifting. Six months into pandemic with all the gyms closed i started getting sore neck and accompanied migraines like twice a week... grrreat

mordymoop2• 6 years ago

Holding still for long periods is almost the worst thing for muscles. Basically your putting strain on the same set of muscles without actually granting them the sort of natural movement that keeps blood and stuff circulating properly.

balfirevic4• 6 years ago

I've been doing weightlifting (not bodybuilding which you should not do if you value your body long-term! Strength Training and a bit of Olympic Weightligting)

Much of what bodybuilders do is strength training, especially at the non-professional levels.

At amateur levels, effective strength training and effective body building are going to be pretty similar.

mancerayder15• 6 years ago

Yes and No. At least there are two big differentiators.

Olympic Weightlifting is generally understood to refer to the movements of clean+jerk, snatch, and associated movements like deadlifting and squatting which are components of the complex lifts.

Strength Training very broadly just means a rep range that makes you stronger, not bigger. But commonly one thinks of powerlifting movements: bench press, squats, deadlifts.

Notice in none of the above did we talk about bicep curls, pulley exercises, leg curls, or any concentration exercises. We didn't even talk about leg press, because in the above two we only use barbells.

So the two big differentiators are:

1. rep range is high with bodybuilding because bodybuilding cares about volume

2. This is the big one. The exercise range for bodybuilding includes many (perhaps mostly) single or few joint exercises.

So when you say that at the amateur level it doesn't matter, that's only true in that any amateur will get stronger. That's true. But the similarity ends right there.

I speak from experience when I say, starting off as an amateur by copying what bodybuilders are doing (bicep curls and other mirror exercises, high rep ranges and doing many single joint movements instead of functional movements) is a recipe for bad habits and movement patterns that you need to spend years to re-learn later. Not to mention machines are garbage and cause injury since they make you do unnatural things (unless you really know what you are doing, which amateurs do not).

bproven2• 6 years ago

IMO - just get the Starting Strength book by Mark Rippetoe and run with that for a year or two (or possibly forever depending on your goals). Quick gym sessions (45 min or less), strength focused exercises and IMO for those basic barbell movements it is the best.

If after you a bit of time you stall in strength and wish to go farther add in more bodybuilding type exercises or switch to another program like Wendlers 5/3/1...etc

But really if I had to recommend anything to most people to stay strong (esp as you age and live the lives we live today), the basic barbell exercises taught in Starting Strength are all you really need for a lifetime.

dahart4• 6 years ago

Yet. I suffer from neck pain

Have you tried cervical traction?

Medicine: You Suck! We can send robots to Mars [...]

Seriously! Though maybe to be fair, the design of the spine isn’t that great. I mean it’s amazing. And simultaneously can’t take the abuse we pile on it. Whoever invents the cure to deteriorating joints and deteriorating nerves is going to solve half the world’s pain and also become very rich.

Someone below wrote

Just curious - why not reply? Saying ‘below’ can be awkward when comments move around.

mancerayder15• 6 years ago

Have you tried cervical traction?

Do you have any recommended products or procedures?

Just curious - why not reply? Saying ‘below’ can be awkward when comments move around.

Because I wanted to expand the context of the thread, I guess? Spending time with a long response to a short comment in a nested thread structure felt like it would get buried.

3131s• 6 years ago

I'm doing cervical spine traction right now... it makes my head hurt but I've found ways to do it that are less uncomfortable.

My story is similar to others here, I'm a lifelong athlete with some injuries that are exacerbated by computer usage. I now stand all day, every day with a monitor at head height, which has been the most impactful lifestyle change. Otherwise I do stretching, some exercises like in this article, deep breathing, and massage.

Looking forward to getting back to lifting and sprinting full-time, meanwhile though my cervical spine needs to become more stable. I'm never going back to sitting at a computer, because I literally can't! I suppose that's good ultimately but I do find it hard to concentrate on certain things while standing.

cadence-• 6 years ago

I have exactly the same thing. Plus last year (2020 was truly shitty) I developed a frozen shoulder, which now prevents me from doing many exercises that used to help me. My other shoulder is starting to hurt too now, and I’m mentally preparing myself to having both shoulders frozen this year. I have been to many doctors, and had lots of tests (x-ray, MRI,ultrasound) but they cannot find anything. Doctors are mostly useless for things like this. They are only helpful when you have accidents with obvious broken or damaged bonuses and tissues etc.

mancerayder15• 6 years ago

What's frozen shoulder?

Have you tried stretching (gently) the levator scapula stretch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSoXPJRnR6E)? I've recently started doing this 1-2 a day. I hold my elbow more to the sky and out than she is doing (sometimes using a doorway to help keep my elbow up), and I hold it for 1m on each side.

The levator scapula attaches to the cervical spine at one end, and the top of the scapula on the other. Shoulder and neck problems can occur in a chain and in a sort of domino effect.

drpgq• 6 years ago

I had frozen shoulder last year and it really sucked. I was pretty despondent as it didn't seem to be getting better going to physio endlessly, but eventually it started getting better and is pretty good now. Seems like a condition that isn't very well understood. It can be pretty debilitating.

kasperni2• 6 years ago

I suspect part of my problem is shoulder mobility so I also do daily scapular work.

I've had some great results with:

- Kettlebell work. TGU/Halos/Arm bar are all great exercises for shoulder health/strengt/mobility.

- Dead hangs [1].

- Some light stick mobility exercises such as [2].

[1] https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-two-surprising-exercis...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn1IBowxflw

mancerayder15• 6 years ago

I was doing deadhangs but I also suffer from elbow pain from a mix of pullups (which I've since not done for a while) and squats. I think deadhangs are great for "decompressing" the spine, though.

I was doing TGU for a while, I should get back into it. Part of it is pandemic-lack-of-space, and part of it is, overhead movements cen trigger the headaches.

mtalantikite3• 6 years ago

When I started my yoga asana practice I ended up uncovering some shoulder dyskinesis I hadn’t been aware of from years and years of programming. That turned into a pretty bad shoulder injury that has on the plus side taught me a lot about my body.

One thing I learned is that a lot of shoulder stuff comes from tightness of the pec minor, which now in retrospect is pretty obvious. Some things that I do that have really helped with shoulder stuff:

1) Shoulder dislocates with an aikido jo. Any rigid stick works, like a broom handle.

2) Camel pose (ustrasana), but coming into it a bit differently than is usually taught in yoga classes. Keep your knees hips width distance apart, with your toes tucked under (rather than pointed), and sit on your heels. Grab your heels with your fingers on the inside of your feet (if you were to open your hand your thumbs will be pointing directly backwards). Make sure you have good shoulder rotation here. Now lift your pelvis up while holding on to your feet, get your pelvis stacked over your knees, and think about lifting your chest to the sky. Send your breath into your upper chest for 5-7 breaths and then come out the way you came in. This really opened my pec minor.

3) Gomukhasana with arms clasped behind your back. Use a strap if you can’t get the bind (it might take a while for this rotation to open).

4) Pull-ups. Lots of pull ups. Started with dead hangs, then would do 50% of max 6x times per day 3-4 days a week. Would retest max every 3 weeks. Got myself to about 15 per set before I decided I didn’t need to do that many pull ups.

5) cat cow with wrists flipped, fingers pointed backwards. Really focusing on the shoulder rotation and getting straight arm scapular engagement.

6) Infraspinatus strengthening a few times per week with light weight. Exercises were described in this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655748/

7) Lots of side planks (vasisthasana). Be careful with this one, it can do a lot of harm if you go too hard with it before you’re ready.

8) Not for shoulder per-se, but what really strengthened my neck muscles over the years has been practicing headstand the way it’s taught in ashtanga vinyasa yoga. (Sirsasana -> urdhva dandasana -> sirsasana -> childs pose).

During quarantine I started supplementing my regular yoga asana practice with Dylan Werner’s True Strength series and I highly recommend it if people are wanting an incremental body weight training series. Lots of mobility work in there too.

solinent• 6 years ago

Another in addition to these excellent suggestions would be scapular pullups and scapular pushups.

gumby• 6 years ago

Medicine: You Suck! [its complex and doesn't work]

Having worked in drug development (and no longer do) I can tell you that everyone in the field knows it sucks and also that you should be (very favorably) astonished that it works at all.

Biological systems are so insanely complex that they are barely understood; most medical treatments are attempts to perturb a single variable (of a system with billions of variables) in the hope that it has a big enough positive effect.

Insanely complex mRNA vaccines are "trivial" by comparison.

When you make a spacecraft as you describe you may have a million moving parts. Their operating domain is well known, they typically only do one or two things, and they can operate in a system that can be isolated (this is the crew capsule; it operates in a vacuum and gets power from the power module...). By comparison a human body is many many billions of parts (brain itself is 80 giganeurons) including many that are not even human, all interacting in parallel (those 80 GN brain cells each has a dendritic fan out of around 10^5, plus new means of connection are still being found); all flooding with various signalling (electrical, hormonal, etc) which is the result of object code being extensively modified over 400 million years.

And that's just for a single organism (which is how we erroneously consider a human being). Humans are themselves parts of complex interacting extracorpal systems of food, actions, and other environmental factors which cannot be controlled because unlike a piece of metal or a silicon die in a ceramic package we interact with the majority of them.

There are a lot of very smart people in computer science but my qualitative impression is that while there a smaller proportion of smart people in the life sciences, the average IQ of those latter group is significantly higher.

Even though I still follow the literature, I have a "holy shit how did someone figure that out?" moment several times a week.

yrimaxi• 6 years ago

I’m sorry. It’s terrible that people have to suffer from this kind of thing and get so little help from the supposed state of the art.

bpizzi• 6 years ago

Damn, I’m exactly on the same boat! I found that wearing a dental splint at night help a lot.

wuwuno• 6 years ago

I'm sure that if we would 'relax' bioethics standards we could make faster progress.

dsego2• 6 years ago

I also have neck issues, esp. when slouching over the laptop. Usually there is a point on the back of my neck that starts protruding. Then my neck and shoulder muscles get inflamed and I get pain, headaches, teary eyes and drowsiness. Usually things get better with an ibuprofen to calm the inflammation. But sometimes my wife needs to push really hard and massage until the protrusion goes back in. I can even feel it sort of click back into place and you can feel it skip while rubbing. It started years ago but it's sort of moved down closer to shoulder, it's not protruding in the same spot as before. One other thing I would do is take a rolling pin against the door frame to massage the neck or pull on the back of my head upward with a towel. Now I also do these neck exercises* and they really do help if I do them regularly, I also use a laptop stand whenever I can so I don't have to look down and slouch.

*https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/236321754/or... (I couldn't find it in english, sorry)

PS A neurologist and an orthopaedist told me that my symptoms don't make sense and they couldn't find anything wrong with my spine.

mancerayder15• 6 years ago

Careful! I would get an MRI which can see if you have a disk bulge or a bone spur. A protruding point does not sound good, but it sounds like something that medicine might possible be useful for for once.

wvh• 6 years ago

You have pushed your body to do something it wasn't designed to do, and over time, you broke it. It's very hard to get back.

You could have chosen another profession, but perhaps you'd have trouble with your knees then.

I had perfect vision for years, but a few years ago, things started to get blurry. Now I have to stop working after some hours because I just can't see the screen anymore, which would have been unthinkable a few years back. It feels pretty absurd having to stop just because you can't physically see anymore what you're doing.

I also do strength training and distance running – also to fight bad effects from prolonged computer use – which I guess keeps me pretty fit and healthy, but again, some part of the body might not be so happy and break down due to exercise.

As an adult, one's surprisingly left mostly to one's own devices when it comes to long-term holistic health. Most things beyond medical or mental emergencies are a lot harder to figure out, with a lot of fads, quacks and charlatans along the way.

vladTheInhaler• 6 years ago

In the before times, I was doing olympic weightlifting as well, and I had very similar problems. I've always had weirdly loose shoulder joints (and can partially dislocate them), as well as weird things with the tendons in my knuckles. And when I started lifting, I would always have trouble with the jerk. Any time I did heavy jerks frequently, I would get escalating shoulder pain. As I trained more, I got better at maintaining shoulder stability. Power jerks still give me a lot of trouble, but split jerks are fine. Though with the pandemic, I haven't trained in months, and my shoulders are feeling all wonky again.

On a similar note, squatting was the absolute best thing for my knees. I had knee pain since I was about ten, and it didn't let up until I started squatting heavy. And whenever I would stop for a couple weeks, the pain would come back.

steve_adams_86• 6 years ago

Likewise, I sourced old old knee and shoulder problems with squats and deadlifts. When I stop, the pain free days stop as well.

Pull ups help me a lot too. I think I do push ups wrong, they seem to cause trouble.

PaulHoule4• 6 years ago

For neck pain take a look at your jaw. About 15% of people have a jaw that pops and many of them have pain from it.

When i followed my dentists advice to get a bite guard for bruxism, diffuse neck and back pain i had for years was greatly reduced, focalized in one muscle, and responsive to ibuprofen. 6 mo later it feels like the kind of injury that takes a year or so to heal. My dentist referred me to an orthodontist who referred me to another practitioner until i'd reached a university medical center a 2hr drive away and was told the doc would call me back in 7 days.

Review articles on pubmed said imaging and other procedures are not worth pursuing, maybe 100 papers were reviewed, 90% were rejected by Cochraine, the only supported treatment is biofeedback -- that is something you can sometimes do w/o equipment by feeling the muscle yourself or with your finger. Which I am doing this week and right now i feel great. There is some chip you can hook up to an arduino that i might try.

This condition is 100% physical, 100% mental, 100% spiritual. Stress causing teeth grinding, that damages the jaw, a very small lesion can cause big pain and distress, more tooth grinding, ... it is depressing and for some people disabling.

amanaplanacanal• 6 years ago

Humans have only been sitting in chairs for the last two or three thousand years, and I think our bodies would thank us if we got rid of them completely. Our natural postures include sitting and lying on the ground, and standing, walking, running, and squatting. Our natural movements are moving between those natural positions.

Chairs are probably hurting our posture in the same way running shoes are hurting our feet and knees.

ahmedfromtunis2• 6 years ago

I had sever neck and upper back pain for years. My solution? I used cardboard boxes and old books I found laying around at the office so that my laptop's screen is at eye level (around 20 cm up, which made me realize how bad my posture was).

Coworkers were laughing at me but I didn't care; just few days later and the pain all but disappeared. I couldn't be happier.

therealdrag0• 6 years ago

You can get good monitor arms to a Achieve this. Make sure to measure though because, as someone who is 6’, some have a max height lower than what I need. The nice thing about an arm is it’s easy to adjust when switching between sitting and standing.

But I agree I can’t believe how far I had to scroll town to see someone mention monitor height.

ahmedfromtunis2• 6 years ago

I wish I could; but here (not USA) such equipment are hard to find and, when available they're generally way too expensive -- just link standing desks and even good, decent office chairs.

Until this is no longer the case, my poor-man's platform will live on :,D

toast0• 6 years ago

Reams of paper are also good for raising monitors or laptops, and easily found in an office.

Of course, if you use the screen and the keyboard of your laptop, you have to balance height of the screen (eye level should be about the middle of the screen) vs height of the keyboard (arms should be about level)

Abishek_Muthian• 6 years ago

I had C1-C3 fusion[1], So the freedom of movement in my neck is severely limited. This aggravates neck/back pain when sitting before computer for > 30 mins. Obviously none of exercise mentioned in the article or most other neck exercises work for me.

So I've built myself 'Butt Pomodoro'[2] which gets triggered when I sit, reminds me to move after 25 mins, to come back after 5 mins and a larger break of 30 mins after 4 such sessions.

I got motivated to build this after a user in problem validation platform wanted a solution to remind them to take break from work without any user action and it ended up solving my problem too.

[1]https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadrip...

[2]https://abishekmuthian.com/butt-pomodoro-a-butt-triggered-po...

mactavish88• 6 years ago

These exercises are definitely not for everyone. I've been suffering with disequilibrium/vertigo for nearly a year now (no headaches, just a weird bobbing/floating/falling sensation that comes and goes). After brain/C-spine MRIs (all "normal"), countless blood tests, carotid ultrasound and vestibular testing, the only thing that's apparently wrong with me is that I have a "vestibular dysfunction". It's come and gone, which is apparently strange, and my family doctor still thinks I have "cervicogenic vertigo". After $2000 spent on physiotherapy, acupuncture and vestibular physiotherapy in 2020 I'm no better off.

Some of the exercises recommended in this article were recommended to me too, and they made my disequilibrium significantly worse and gave me headaches.

Then I found this article: https://mskneurology.com/vestibular-impairment-and-its-assoc...

Organized a consultation with with the guy who wrote the article and he took another look at my MRI. Turns out the radiologists totally missed several things that could clearly be causing my symptoms:

- I've got forward head posture and the top of my neck's straightened. Possibly from previous whiplash injuries several years ago combined with many years' computer use.

- My C1 vertebra seems to be compressing one of my internal jugular veins (one of the primary outflow veins from my brain). Radiologists are trained to ignore this sign apparently because it's so common, but this clearly affects the blood flow dynamics in your head and can apparently trigger migraines and other problems. With my C1 just 4mm too far forward, it almost totally closes off that vein.

- The increased blood pressure in my head from the decreased outflow of blood clearly shows one of the signs of increased cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pressure: an "empty sella sign" (my pituitary gland is squashed against the bone because of the increased pressure). Apparently increased blood pressure in the head causes increased CSF pressure, because they're related to each other. No mention of this sign in my radiology report.

- This increased blood pressure might be interfering with blood drainage from my vestibular apparatus, which could be the cause of my weird vestibular problem.

Of course, the MRI was taken while I was lying down, and other tests I had imply that my CSF pressure is normal while upright, but I lie down for 6-8 hours a night. How much damage is that increased CSF pressure doing while I sleep? I'm not sure, but I definitely tend to feel like shit most mornings, even though I sleep on average 7.5 hours a night.

What I've learned from this experience so far:

1. If these exercises cause you headaches, don't do them, you might actually be doing them incorrectly or you. may have structural issues that cause these exercises to hurt yourself. Like me, you may need exercises tailored to your specific problems, so consulting with someone who knows what they're doing is super important.

2. If you're symptomatic and your radiologist says your MRIs are "normal", try get a second opinion.

3. I really wish more physiotherapists were trained in interpreting MRIs and doppler ultrasounds, especially to pick up on more subtle issues.

j7ake• 6 years ago

Does doing sit-ups exercise these muscles? I find that my neck goes forward when trying to do sit-ups.

01100011• 6 years ago

One thing that helped was a standing desk with monitor arms. When my neck hurts I change the height of my monitors so the angle of my neck changes. It's not a cure, but it helps.

Also, shrugging my shoulders up to my ears periodically helps. PT docs tell me it's the wrong thing to do. I think they figure I'm strengthening my traps, but really I think the movement just helps reset something in my neck. YMMV.

If you're twenty something and don't have physical issues from sitting in front of a computer all day, just wait, you will.

oh_sigh• 6 years ago

If people are giving out free pain advice in this thread, I have a mystery...

I frequently wake up with pain in the left side of my neck, right under the base of my skull. When this happens, my right neck flexion is fine but my left neck flexion feels like something is misaligned and stops far sooner than flexing right. I also feel pain at the base of my neck near my SC joint, but a little towards the middle of my clavicle.

The weirdest part is that when this happens, i spend all day stretching trying to undo the kink, and what fixes it is something that happens in my elbow - there's a loud clunk and a snap and then my neck feels better, my range of motion returns, and I feel like I have better feeling in my left hand.

What gives? It literally feels like a structure(nerve or something) gets misaligned and is getting pulled in weird ways until at one point it snaps back into place.

bolangi2• 6 years ago

Usually neck problems are accompanied by stiffness in the upper ribs and spin. More flexibility in these structures that support the neck will lead to less demands on the neck and more comfortable movement overall.

antognini• 6 years ago

How does one increase mobility in one's upper ribs?

bolangi2• 6 years ago

I studied a method where a series of related movements done slowly with attention helps parts of the body to move together more flexibly and fluidly.

Here's an example, if you lie on your back, put your right palm on your forehead, fingers parallel to hairline or wrinkles in your forehead elbow in air... In this position, you can use the arm and hand to roll the head going very slowly over several seconds, taking a long time for the nose to move to the left just one centimeter. Just as slowly use your arm and hand to move the head back to the middle.

By repeating it a few times while taking care to continue breathing smoothly in the background, it becomes possible for you to learn to use your arm muscles to roll the head gently and precisely, taking over the work usually done by the neck muscles.

For their part, the neck muscles are learning to let go of habitual tonus to accept passive movement.

Pause between movements. When you start again, go so gradually you can feel how soft intention to roll the head with the hand begins to manifest as movement.

You can also try moving the head 1cm to the right. The head rolls differently that way and if you do it slowly you can feel the details.

If you pay attention, you'll probably notice that when you roll the head like this, there are small supporting movements of the shoulder blade and sternum. You might feel a shift of weight to the left where you feel your upper ribs against the floor.

Then you have a rest and go through this process using the other arm.

You maybe think if you do more, you can force the stiff ribs to move, but it's the opposite: strong stretching movements, cause the ribs to protectively tighten themselves. (That's how I think about it, but of course it's actually muscles around the ribs that hold them in place.)

Instead by going near the limit of slow and small movements, each movement generates more information, there is time and space for ribs, sternum, spine, shoulders, and head to let go and allow themselves to move together in a new way.

Hundreds of these movement lessons devised by Moshe Feldenkrais to improve human functions are called Awareness Though Movement. Hands-on work for this same purpose is called Functional Integration.

SleepyTortoise• 6 years ago

For two years I had been suffering back pain from muscle spasms around my scapula, and pain in the joint between a rib and my spine. It would start every day at 12-2pm, and continue for the rest of the day.

I worked out (incl. DL, Squat, running), but had to stop because it exacerbated the pain.

Physio/Doctors/specialists/X-ray/MRI came up with nothing.

WFH exacerbated the issue.

It was impacting my life every day: I could only work for ~3 hours per day, and walking/driving became painful.

I'm 95% better now, and working on rehab.

Here's what helped (thanks to a spine physio):

* Avoiding craning my neck: raise monitor, raise phone. * Frequent breaks. * Scapula mobility. * Deep neck flexor exercises.

I think this started when I heavily used my laptop on my couch, which relied on craning too much.

Resolving this has been my highlight of 2020.

tacon2• 6 years ago

These exercises seem pretty tame for exercising the neck. There is a long history of ways to increase neck muscle strength. The Nautilus 4-way neck machines are the best engineered, though you won't find them in many gyms, probably because they can be very dangerous for untrained people. Under full load, a distraction that causes you to twist your head suddenly can seriously injure your neck.

For cheap and safe neck exercises, the best method today is a combination of timed static contractions (TSC)[1] and a cheap webbed strap[2]. As with all strength training, intensity of effort is 80-90% of the training effect, followed by proper form. The disadvantage of TSCs is that there is no simple way to record your progress week to week as you grow stronger. But if you load and unload your neck slowly, you can exercise each of the four directions to momentary muscular failure (MMF) in a safe and very time efficient protocol.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph8If3u67kw

[1] http://ren-ex.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/TimedStaticCont...

[2] https://www.strapworks.com/Side_Release_Buckle_Belts_p/srbb2...

tacon2• 6 years ago

And for the problem of poor posture from "computer crouch", the simple answer is the machine in your gym labeled "rear delt"[0], often combined with "pec fly". Build up your strength on the rear delt machine and you are building exactly the muscles that restore your natural posture.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WP4mBAg3Ng

Deep neck flexor exercises – Back and neck

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