What Happens When You Come In
Hi, I am Dr. Trista Shelton here at Hands On Wellness Center. Today, I wanna talk about how chiropractic can help with neck pain and headaches.
When you come into our office complaining of neck pain or headaches, we’ll have a conversation, figure out where we think it’s coming from, and then, more than likely, do a chiropractic adjustment for you.
We’ve found over the years that there’s a lot of fear around a neck adjustment, and I just want you to understand how non-scary it is. That was super technical. So I’m gonna go through how we adjust you if you come in with neck pain.
Starting Face Down
We’re gonna start usually with you face down. I like to do a little bit of a stretch through the upper back here, get the muscles to relax, and get you used to any sort of touch that’s going on there.
If you’ve never been adjusted before, I think the big fear is just the neck, period. The sound is what freaks a lot of people out, but not everybody makes a lot of noise, and some people get a lot of noise. So we’re about to see what happens here.
Putting pressure here at the base of the neck allows me to—do you see how the head comes back just a little bit? It helps me recreate that curve in the neck, which is really helpful in eliminating any of the tension and stress that gets built up in the neck and in the upper traps here.
When I press here, I can kinda feel what’s stuck and what’s not moving, and I’m gonna adjust both sides of her neck down here. As I put my hand right here on her shoulder, I stabilize her head here and have her relax her shoulder and let her head just fall to that side. There’s a little bit of pressure right there. Come on back to center. And that’s all that looks like right there.
I’m gonna come to the other side and do the exact same thing. By adjusting this area and releasing that, it allows the nerves to talk to this whole area and eliminates a lot of tension in the upper trap and in the shoulder. And possibly, if you’ve got shooting hand pain, neck pain, or shoulder pains, it helps stabilize that quite a bit.
Checking and Adjusting the Neck
I’m gonna have you go on your back, please. As she flips over, you’ll see that this lovely young lady is my daughter, Skylar, who has been adjusted since she was a wee bit. She’s quite used to all this stuff.
The next thing I do is come in and feel the tenderness, the trigger points, or points of tension in the neck here. The patient will tell you if it’s tender or not. Is that tender right there, Skylar?
“No.”
It’s ’cause she’s been adjusted a lot. Again, I press into this structure. I like to tell all of my patients that God did a really good job on the design here. We tend to just screw it up.
We are supposed to be here, ears over our shoulders really comfortably, especially as we stand. That doesn’t happen because most of our lives are spent like this, looking down at computers, at devices, at children, at whatever. By opening the neck up here, it usually feels pretty good and takes some of that pressure off.
We go through and see what needs to be moved and give it a little bit of a push. As you see, her neck isn’t flinging all over. It’s not a lot of motion going on. It’s just a quick, easy little click.
Stretching and Supporting the Neck
After that, I’ll always follow up with a little bit of a stretch, which feels pretty yummy. How does that feel, Skylar?
“Pretty good.”
We go from side to side as well. We wanna open up those shoulders. Usually, I’ll spend a little more time on those knots, but I know where hers are. She’s good. Stretch through, once again, on the other side. It’s just about opening it up and letting things breathe. You can see a lot of our massage therapists do a lot of the same stuff because it really does work and it really does help.
The other thing we’ll do is have them lay down. I tell everyone, when they go home, roll up a towel if you want to get a gel ice pack, but support the neck here. Super important for a pillow as well. This structure is what we need to support. We need to be mindful of not laying like this or like this, and just really support the neck and let the head come back. It makes a big difference.
After that, come on up. We’ll usually get the rest of the spine too, but we’ll talk about that later.
Electric Stimulation and Ice
We’ll bring her over, and we use this machine called electric stimulation on our patients. We put these lovely little pads on the upper traps and into the neck typically, but it depends.
If their stress is here to here, which is very common with neck pain and a lot of headaches, it just pulls your head all day long and creates a soreness or a band. You can get it in the forehead, behind the eyeballs. All very common when this area is very, very bound up. So we wanna release that and get it a little bit loose.
Hold your hair up for me, please. Usually, I like to place the pads on the upper traps, or one of my staff will do that. We’ll do this right on this upper trap here, and then we come right up in the neck as well. We do the same on the other side.
What this machine does is put an electrical current through your muscle. Sounds crazy, but it’s not. It creates a contraction in the muscle, which you’ll be able to see on Skylar. That’ll pump out any swelling, reprogram the muscle a bit, and just leave you feeling very good when it’s all done.
We love ice here. Never put ice on your skin directly. We always use a barrier. We like these pillowcases, but basically, we wrap it around your shoulders. I’m gonna have you lay flat back, and we get a nice pillow underneath the neck. Super important when you’re icing or rolling up at home that the pillow comes directly underneath there and that your head goes back so you’re able to relax in that curved position. I’ll give you a knee pillow as well.
All right, so now this machine starts off really kinda tingly, and it moves its way up to a contraction. She’s done this a lot of times, and she still giggles. Feel that tingling?
“Mm-hmm.”
It’s gonna start tingling. It’ll feel like a pins-and-needles feeling, and then it starts pulsing just a little bit. All you need is a little bit of a pulse. That’s it. If you like it really strong, we’ll do it really strong, but it’s completely up to the patient. How’s that feel?
“Good.”
All right. We know that’s moving. And if you’re cold, we’ll also give you a big fuzzy blanket, cover you up, and let you take a 10-minute nap.
That’s how we start off with helping you feel better from neck pain. Any questions or comments, leave them down below, and hopefully we’ll see you soon.
