"You are a pain in the neck!" Did your parents ever say that to you? They certainly said it to me a number of times during my childhood. When I finally experienced actual pain in my neck, what they said landed a little more personally. Pain in the neck is not only irritating, it's incredibly distracting. Even the slightest discomfort in the neck can spoil a person's concentration because of its proximity to the head and brain.

Getting pain in your neck is very common and a natural result of the aging process. If you have pain in the cervical spine area (the neck area) it could be a number of things. It could be general stiffness, stress, a viral infection, a bacterial infection, arthritis, or a number of other ailments.

Symptoms of Cervical Spondylosis

Arthritis of the neck, clinically known as cervical spondylosis, can arise for a number of reasons. Over a long period of time, your neck might develop bone spurs that inflame and irritate the joints of the neck. Problems with the disks or ligaments of the neck can cause the onset of cervical spondylosis. Stenosis, the narrowing of the spinal canal, can trigger neck arthritis and neck arthritis pain.

Any condition involving the spinal cord area should be checkout out immediately. The pain associated with cervical spondylosis ranges from mild to crippling. Compression of the spinal canal can be dangerous and lead to pain all over the neck and back areas. You might even feel numbness in the arms and hands or trouble walking. Headaches that begin in the neck area are also symptoms of arthritis of the neck.