Many of us are addicted to our phones and/or we are spending all day long on our computers for work. As a result, we are developing a ton of tension between our shoulder blades, across the top of our shoulders, and in our necks as well.
This is commonly related to our tech use causing both movement and postural stress from having our shoulders rolled forward and head held in a forward position for a long time. That is putting a tremendous amount of stress on the musculature and joints of the neck and upper back.
The pain you feel may be broad, achey, or sore and you may not know when or why it first started. The muscles feel as though they are getting tighter and tighter as time goes on. When we do an exam, aside from tight muscles, many times we find a lot of joint restriction in the neck, mid-back, and shoulder. Because of this, we tend to see a lot of headaches as well.
So if this sounds like you, there are some things you can do for it. We will cover what you can do at home as well as things we can do here in the office in our next couple of videos.
Laser Therapy for Tech Related Neck Pain
Today I want to talk about something new that we have incorporated in the office and that is using lasers for our neck pain and mid-back pain patients. Especially our patients that are coming in due to computer or phone use.
I’m sure you’ve seen all of us. Were walking around with our heads down, thumbs typing away on our phones, right? That greatly stresses the muscles of the neck, across the top of the shoulder blades, and in between the shoulder blades.
When we have this type of injury, there’s nothing physically damaged. The muscles are not torn and there’s no trauma directly in the area. Instead, the vast majority of the pain is being driven because we have a loss of blood flow to the area and a loss of oxygen.
The reason laser works so well for this is that it reduces pain by helping the muscles relax and increasing blood flow and oxygen to this area. The laser does this by causing vasodilation, meaning it opens up blood vessels so we can get more blood into the area and therefore more oxygen into the area as well.
The laser we use is a class four laser, meaning that when you get the laser done, you as the patient are going to feel a sensation of heat. There are other classes of laser (one, two, and three) but these are considered “cold lasers” because they are not powerful enough to produce that warming feeling.
Treatment typically lasts anywhere from 5-10 minutes. If we are treating an acute problem, we will do about four to six treatments. If it’s a more chronic problem, we will do about eight to ten treatments.
Technique for Neck Pain in Desk Workers
Today we will be discussing the use of Graston technique to help our patients with tech-based neck pain. If you’ve watched some of our earlier videos, we have discussed why we get neck, upper back, and mid back pain due to sitting at our computers or staring over our phones all day.
So Graston is a fantastic technique. It is an instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization technique where we use a surgical-grade steel tool and apply some pressure in order to glide over tissues. This helps to speed up the healing process by increasing blood flow to the area. This will help the muscles to relax and reduce pain overall.
When performing this on a patient, we will start with a bit of emollient, which is a gel that allows the instrument to flow, or scrape, over the tissue easily. So we apply a little of that to your skin. From here we use the Graston tool over the affected area. For neck pain, we work muscles of the neck as well as into the upper trap and between the shoulder blades. We can feel areas of tightness even through the tool, so we will gently scrape over those muscles feeling for adhesions.
From here we can take a smaller tool and get into those areas to break up adhesions. It can start to look really red after treatment which is actually all the increased blood flow to the area.
You may also notice tiny red dots, that’s petechiae. That is perfectly fine and normal, but it is a signal to us that we have treated that area enough in that session. We don’t go past that because it may cause a bit of bruising, and you do not want bruising.
After we are done with the Graston technique, we will lead you through some exercises. This helps to bring even more blood flow to this area, bringing even more benefit to you as the patient.
Neck Stretches for Tech related Neck Pain
Today I want to discuss the exercises that I teach all of my neck pain patients to do at work. This is something simple, you could do once an hour, and it’s actually best done if you are sitting in a chair.
You are going to be stretching for about 3 minutes and the idea is to get blood flow to the neck area to help with some of the neck related pain.
Here are the three exercises
- Start by grabbing the underside of your chair on the side you wish to stretch. If you can’t reach the bottom of the chair, just sit on your hand. We just want the arm locked down so it won’t move at all. Then take your other free hand, grab your head and gently stretch it to the opposite side. Don’t pull too hard, just enough to get a nice stretch through the side of your neck. Hold for 15-30 seconds then relax.
- Keep your stabilizing hand under the chair and this time, use your free hand to pull the top of your head down to the side to look across your body. Again pulling just enough to feel a nice stretch through the back side of the neck. Hold 15-30 seconds then relax.
- Keep your stabilizing hand under the chair. This time, turn your head to look towards the side that you are stretching, take your free hand, and pull back on your head into extension. This will stretch the muscles in the front of your neck. Be careful with this area as these muscles can be sensitive. Hold 15-30 seconds then relax.
Repeat all exercises on both sides.
Watch our video for a demonstration on how to perform all 3 exercises.
In this brief 3 minutes of stretching, you’re getting the side, back, and front of the neck on both sides. Set an alarm on your phone to do this every hour to help with your neck pain. And always remember to live with passion, not pain.
