The secret to waking up without neck pain.
Do you ever wake up with a terrible crick in your neck? There’s a secret to waking up without neck pain and it could change your sleep forever, so keep reading.
“Crick (/krik/) noun: a painful stiff feeling in the neck.”
Sometimes it starts with that creeping sensation behind your shoulder blade. As the day goes on there is a growing tightness that you can’t shake. You’re busy and you have other important things to do so you ignore it. Other times, there’s no warning at all.
Before you know it, it’s morning and you wake up with a terrible ‘crick’ in your neck and you have no idea why.
You can’t move your head because of pain and muscle spasm in your neck. Even small neck movements cause extreme pain. The next few days are excruciating. It’s hard to think about much else, let alone be productive and present in your life.
Fatigue and headaches from the pain soon follow. The constant tightness is like an itch you can’t scratch. You’re a shadow of yourself as the joy from any activity gets sucked out of your life. It follows you around at work, during exercise and even rest doesn’t provide much relief. Heat, ice and pain barely take the edge off.
You start to wonder if you did something serious to hurt yourself, but how could you? It was just there when you woke up!
It’s a condition called an ‘acute wry neck’ and is often related to sleeping in an awkward position. It’s common after sleeping in a bed that is not your own and using a different pillow. After all, where do pillows go when they’re no longer comfortable? The guest bedroom of course, someone else’s problem now.
It’s true, once the pain sets in it is difficult to get relief fast enough. Expert treatment helps to relieve the pain, but you do not want to experience this again.
So, wanna know a secret to avoid waking up with a crick in your neck? Keep reading, cause I see this condition in my clinic every… single… day.
This secret can help you wake up with energy, cut headache fatigue so you can work and exercise without feeling worse after. Best of all, it will remove the fear and frustration of it happening again.
“Waking up with sharp neck pain that makes it hard to move your neck is common, but not a normal thing and you can avoid it.”
If it sounds like I’ve been describing you then the paragraphs below could change your life. I’m going to share the secret to waking up without neck pain and some of the most common mistakes people make to keep it coming back.
The Secret
Your neck is the victim, not the cause.
Yes, the pain comes from an inflamed neck joint causing muscles to guard and spasm, but there’s always a reason. If it keeps happening, there is a nearby cause, which is often stiffness in the upper back.
A stiff upper back means one thing: the joints in the neck have to compensate and move even more than usual. The muscles creep on to protect the area.
If nothing changes the joint becomes inflamed and painful. The surrounding muscles go into spasm and this is the moment you wake up and take notice of what has been going on.
Your body has given you a strong enough message, pain, to motivate you to do something about it. Expert treatment helps relieve pain, but what can avoid the agony of it happening again?
Common neck pain mistakes
Below are some common mistakes that cause chronic neck pain. Often we see several of these mistakes in one individual.
Stomach sleeping
Sleeping on your stomach means your neck has to crank to the side all night so you can breathe. This stresses the neck joints on one side, especially if the upper back is already stiff. Side sleeping is not much better as it compresses the neck and shoulder even with a well fitted pillow.
Head carriage
This means the head is in front of the body instead of on top of it. That’s a huge problem! It is common when on a computer, phone or driving. It leads to a stiff upper back and constant stress to the neck joints that wake up screaming for help!
Dropped shoulder
Slanted shoulders often means the whole upper body leans to one side. Neck joints on the higher side get compressed while those on the dropped side get strained.
Straight backs and slouching
There are two types of people who run into regular neck pain. Those that round the mid back too much and those that have a flat mid back. Either posture can lead to chronic neck pain.
Head tilting
Tilting the head sideways to one side is a habit many people are not aware they are doing. It crushes the joints in the neck along the side you tilt towards and strains the other side.
Stress
The ‘startle response’ is a reflex that happens when we’re scared or surprised. Shoulders shrug and other muscles tense to protect vulnerable parts, such as the neck. Chronic stress will cause a similar response of tension in the neck and shoulders.
Right now you’re thinking “it’s my neck that always hurts, sure my upper back feels tight, but I do not get much pain there.”
Yes, the injury and pain comes from the neck. This is what we focus on in treatment when someone first comes in with neck pain so they can get relief. Stopping treatment there would be shortsighted.
“Addressing stiffness in the mid back along with other causes are key to stopping the pain cycle.”
I had a patient recently who would wake up with neck pain every couple of months. She told me that it would only last a couple of weeks at most, but would lose sleep, suffer at work and miss her workouts. She knew it was not serious, but every few months her business, social life and health got derailed. The pain was short lived, but the cost was high.
Other treatments she had tried focused on the neck and sometimes would help. Sometimes they did not. Each time she’d try something different hoping to stop the pain from returning. She would jump from treatment to treatment, but only until the pain resolved.
When she came to me I told her that I did not have a magic cure. Treatment for the neck pain that would not be much different from what she could get elsewhere. But, I also told her that a different result would need commitment even once the neck pain has resolved.
Working on stiffness in her upper back and modifying some habits was necessary. They were not as quick a fix as the neck pain itself.
In the last 6 months she has had no recurring neck pain in the morning. Her sleep has been better, it’s easy to finish a workday and her fitness has progressed. She can recognize early signs of tension and knows exactly what to do to stop it before pain happens.
If any of this relates to you, you’re not alone. We see patients with wry necks in the clinic every day. We’re happy to be able to help with expert care, but my passion is preventing suffering in the first place.
If you have been suffering with chronic neck pain in the morning send me a message and let me know your story. Sometimes the best solutions have simple answers.
