There are so many perspectives on the treatment of neck pain that it is always worth trying different approaches until you find one that works for you. If you are struggling to find effective neck pain treatment near you, the best advice we can give is to be patient and persistent. One of the secrets to doing this right is knowing that, to some extent, no two physiotherapists, osteopaths or chiropractors treat neck pain the same way. So it is always worth trying out multiple clinics, even if they are all from the same profession. But what if you really can’t find effective neck pain treatment near you? Thousands of people go onto internet search engines each year and type in the fateful phrase ‘neck pain treatment near me’. A growing number of these individuals fail miserably in this endeavour and travel much further afield to get treatment for their neck pain, but is it worth it?

Access to the proper treatment when you have neck pain is vital. Not only that, it is essential that that treatment be available to you over time. Unlike getting a filling at the dentist, fully rehabilitating a chronic neck pain issue takes time. Working with the right clinicians is almost like working with the correct Personal Trainer; you can’t go and see the right PT once and expect to have 6-pack abs. It’s putting in reps that create change regarding neck pain, which is a big part of why it is so much better if you can get neck pain treatment near you.

Acute mechanical low back pain is one of the most common complaints for GP visits in the United States and across the Western World. The prevalence of mechanical low back pain is estimated to be up to 84% of the population, with a further 12% experiencing severe disability within their lifetime. In New Zealand, it is the leading contributor to disability, incurring significant medical costs, workers’ compensation and ACC claims. Most occurrences of low back pain are mechanical, meaning the pain intrinsically comes from the spine, surrounding soft tissues, spinal joints and/or intervertebral disks. For low back pain to be considered acute, it has to be present for less than four to six weeks. Acute mechanical low back pain is also commonly referred to as lumbar syndrome, lumbosacral sprain/strain, or idiopathic low back pain. 

What Causes Acute Mechanical Low Back Pain?

The causes of acute low back pain are usually mechanical, meaning the source of the pain is triggered by movement within the spinal column. This can lead to irritation or damage to the moving parts of the spine, impacting the ligaments, tendons, facet joints, vertebral bodies, intervertebral discs, or surrounding soft tissue that can lead to a reactive spasm. In the majority of instances of mechanical low back pain, the exact cause is identified in only 20% of cases, with the rest remaining unknown. Fortunately, most cases resolve quickly with time and low back pain treatment. While less common, other factors that can lead to acute low back pain include spinal stenosis, herniated discs, zygapophysial joint pain, discogenic pain, vertebral fractures, sacroiliac joint pain, and myofascial pain.

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines chronic pain as ‘An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage’. Chronic pain is pain that persists or recurs for longer than three months. Such pain often becomes a major problem in some patients. In recent years, the exponential rise of chronic pain has been the leading cause of global disability and disease burden. Worldwide, 1.9 billion people were affected by recurrent tension-type headaches.

Furthermore, when measuring years lived with disability, chronic low back and neck pain has been the leading cause of disability internationally. While being such a common issue, the reasons why some people are more prone to it and what factors lead to chronic pain are considered by many to be mysterious. At Featherston St Pain Clinic, we beg to differ and find that there are many instances where the reasons for a person’s pain can be uncovered and successfully managed. Medications have been proven beneficial in improving the quality of life of those suffering from chronic pain, temporomandibular joint dysfunction and migraines. Yet often at a terrible cost. Low-level laser therapy could provide a non-invasive, pain-free and non-toxic treatment option without the consequential impacts of prolonged medication use. 

Frozen shoulder is a horrendously disabling, painful and frustrating complaint. Most people who experience frozen shoulder have been extremely healthy and active their whole lives and suddenly, out of the blue, get the bitter taste of what it’s like to live with an actual disability. No fun at all. The only positive you can take from the pain and disability that frozen shoulder brings is that it makes you highly motivated to get well. This is lucky because frozen shoulder takes a fair amount of tenacity and skill to resolve successfully in a satisfactory timeframe. When the rubber hits the road, and you’ve decided to get treatment for your frozen shoulder, what matters is making sure you are getting the right treatments and not the wrong ones. So, what are treatments that work for frozen shoulder?

Shockwave Therapy for Frozen Shoulder

Shockwave therapy is an excellent research-based way to treat the symptoms of frozen shoulder and dramatically speed up frozen shoulder recovery. Shockwave therapy was developed originally for the treatment of kidney stones. Amazingly, once this treatment was established, it became apparent to researchers that in addition to dissolving kidney stones, patients were also experiencing spontaneous resolution of stubborn pains. 

There is a wide range of applications for shockwave therapy in pain management; it can be used for anything from tendinitis in your thumb right through to resolving stress fractures. In the instance of frozen shoulder, shockwave therapy helps dissolve the fibrous thickening in the joint capsule, much the same way it resolves the stones in kidney stones and the way that it dissolves calcification and shoulder tendons with calcific tendinitis. A few (if any) treatments can accelerate recovery from frozen shoulder as quickly and consistently as shockwave therapy.

Rehabilitation For Frozen Shoulder

The word rehabilitation is used here to refer to our actions in the long term to ensure the frozen shoulder doesn’t come back. So we are talking about relieving frozen shoulder and preventing future attacks of frozen shoulder. Rehabilitation for frozen shoulder is essentially the same as rehabilitation of posture. One of the primary underlying causes of frozen shoulder is the combination of sedentary work at a desk, usually combined with postural weakness (and also stress, FYI).

So in the long term, rehabilitating frozen shoulder is about strengthening the postural muscles and ensuring that you’re more upright over time. In nitty-gritty practical terms, this means spending 10 minutes a day doing strength exercises for your upper back. These can be done at the gym, but they can also be done at home quite quickly with some essential equipment, and ultimately, they are no more trouble than you already take to look after your teeth. This takes the pressure off the shoulder joint capsule, making you less susceptible to repeat cases of frozen shoulder.

Frozen shoulder could easily be the most difficult complaint we treat in our clinic. Perhaps along with the worst cases of back pain that have been left for far too long before seeking treatment. So if it’s that stubborn, the first question is, ‘can frozen shoulder be treated’?. And the answer is yes. One of the good pieces of news about frozen shoulder treatment is that, more or less, every case self-resolves eventually. The question is, how long are we willing to wait for your frozen shoulder to resolve itself, and how much can we speed up the process. So if we acknowledge that frozen shoulder can be treated successfully, then the next thing most people want to know is how long it’s going to take. As you may have guessed, this leads to the proverbial piece of string factor. Thankfully, there is a little more certainty about the treatment needed for frozen shoulder when compared to the length of a piece of string, because there is undoubtedly far less variation.

Frozen Shoulder and Treatment

Frozen shoulders that receive treatment tend to resolve on average about 90% faster than their untreated frozen shoulder counterparts. Almost all frozen shoulders will resolve within two years, even if they don’t receive treatment. Most people being frozen shoulder don’t get any proper rehab in the first year or so, due to a lack of options at the DHB level. In a typical frozen shoulder scenario the patient who has no treatment may find that in the first year of their onset of frozen shoulder, they may only experience a 10% improvement. Then later, when they do finally find a treatment that works for them, they can make another 50% improvement in a couple of months and then move up to about an 80% improvement in another couple of months—leaving them the remaining 20% to work through over six months. In total, there’s a 10% average improvement in the first year with no treatment, followed by a further 90% improvement in the second year with treatment. Of course, if they had found the successful treatment in the first year, the whole process would have taken half as long, or even 10% as long as the entire process with no treatment.

Cupping therapy involves placing cups on the skin to create suction. This suction increases blood circulation to the area where the cups are placed. This may relieve muscle tension, improving overall blood flow and promoting cell repair. It may also help form new connective tissues and create new blood vessels in the tissue. Cupping therapy is an ancient, holistic method for treating various illnesses, diseases, and conditions, including hip pain, shoulder pain and low back pain. While the exact origin of cupping therapy remains controversial, its use has been documented in Egyptian and Chinese medical practices dating back as early as 1,550 B.C. While cupping therapy has fallen in and out of favour throughout the centuries, it’s currently making a resurgence thanks to prominent athletes and health-conscious celebrities sporting the distinctive red circular cupping marks (not bruises!). 

While there are multiple techniques and methods involved in cupping therapy, here at Featherston Street Pain Clinic, we specifically focus on ‘dry’ cupping created using negative pressure suction. Our practitioners use an apparatus to create a gentle suction that draws your skin upward into the cup. (Your skin is not broken at any time in the process.)

What Does Cupping Therapy Feel Like?

As suction is directly applied to the skin, there’s an initial tightness sensation as the skin is drawn into the cup; the feeling passes quickly as your practitioner moves on to place the next cup. As the practitioner repeats the suction process, they will check to ensure the cups aren’t too intense. 

While traditionally, heat was used to create a vacuum, we use a suctioning apparatus that draws the air out of the cup. As time passes, your body will begin to acclimate to the feeling of the cups. The amount of cups required is dependent on the area of complaint. When being introduced to cupping therapy for low back pain, fewer cups with less pressure will be used. The cups will be placed for 5-20 minutes; afterwards, the practitioner will release the pressure in the cup, which often gives a calming, relaxing effect. Depending on the type and severity of your low back pain, a singular cup may be used with the practitioner gliding it across your skin, commonly known as ‘running cupping’. Running cupping has been shown to locally and systemically remove toxins by stimulating the immune response by dispersing uric acid, a natural waste product from the digestion of certain foods. 

We tend to attribute it to sore muscles or stiff joints when we experience low back pain, neck pain, or shoulder pain. However, many chronic back pain symptoms are caused by a thin casing of connective tissue surrounding and holding every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fibre and muscle in place: the fascia. While receiving little attention in the modern western world, fascia plays a critical role in every movement you make. 

Like ligaments and tendons, fascia is primarily composed of elastin and collagen, making it flexible and stretchy when the body moves. Interestingly, fascia also contains pain receptors and mechanoreceptors, which detect stretching or changes in pressure within the body. For this reason, some scientists consider the body’s fascia to be one giant sensory organ! Healthy fascia has a smooth and slippery texture and can shift its consistency between a gel-like state and a more fluid one when needed. However, when unhealthy, fascia can become sticky, clumpy, tight, and flaky when unhealthy. It forms restrictions, adhesions and distortions, causing various problems, including chronic back pain.

What is Fascia?

Have you eaten chicken breast or lamb shoulder recently? Notice that clear-like film that covers it? That’s fascia. At the same time, it looks like one sheet of tissue, but in reality, it’s made of multiple layers of liquid called hyaluron, intertwining all the muscle fibres. This provides the internal structure of the body, rather than it being just the skeleton that holds the body up, the facia and connecting soft tissue that keeps the skeleton upright also. The fascial tissue has so many nerve endings it’s almost as sensitive as skin. The fascial tissue is designed to stretch as you move. However, when the fascia is stressed, it tightens up. If the fascia dries up and tightens around the muscle fibre, it can impact mobility and cause painful knots to develop.

Number 1) Quit Planking

There is no question that one can learn to plank and crunch in a way that is not harmful to the shoulders and neck, but that’s a whopper topic in and of itself that very few of us have the time and energy for. Planking and similar exercises like crunches involve an immense exertion of trunk strength, causing almost everybody to clench their shoulder and neck muscles. Excessive planking like this is risky for the lower spine. It is great to be able to work on your abs, and there’s no question that planking and crunches increase tone in the front of the abdominal wall, but the question is at what cost. Due to the amount of effort required in holding a plank, combined with our strong tendency to clench our neck and shoulders when exercising, it is almost a universal tendency to compress the delicate joints of the neck and compress the rotator cuff during trunk flexion exercises. This is a major cause of shoulder pain and neck pain. 

If you are determined to have great abs but not to live with neck and shoulder pain, it is worth considering very gentle crunches with a small range of motion. Be sure to keep your chin on your chest and the tips of your shoulders down; you will be able to work on your abs without inflaming or aggravating your neck pain and shoulder pain tendencies. If you want to take this to black belt level, gently activate your pelvic floor the whole time you do the exercise; that way, your true core is activated too.