Your neck contains muscles, bones, nerves, arteries, and veins, as well as many ligaments and other supporting structures. Your neck requires flexibility and range of motion to support your head. Since your neck is the sole support of your head, it is extremely susceptible to neck injury. When the neck's range of motion or flexibility is limited, neck pain can occur.

Most of the time neck pain is caused from straining the muscles or ligaments of the neck. Occasionally, whiplash caused from car accidents or other sudden changes in neck movement and tendonitis (swelling of the tendons) can cause neck pain. No matter what the cause, neck pain can interfere with you life and seeing a chiropractor may be the solution.

Symptoms of Neck Injury:

Neck pain is often the first symptom of something wrong. You may describe the pain as sharp, dull, pulsating, burning, or cramping. Describing the type of pain to your doctor or chiropractor helps them identify the nature of the injury.

Sometimes you may not experience pain at all but instead experience numbness in the neck or shoulders. If a nerve is pinched, you might experience a sense of your arm "falling asleep" or a tingling sensation in your neck, shoulders or arms. A pinched nerve may also present itself as a burning or prickling sensation traveling throughout the neck, head or shoulder area.

Treatment for Neck Pain:

First you need to decide the kind of treatment you want. You can choose a medical doctor or a chiropractor. However, many times doctors will refer you to a chiropractor or a physical therapist anyway. So why not avoid the middle man and go directly to the chiropractor? Chiropractors go through 4,200 hours of schooling which includes a minimum of 1,000 hours of supervised clinical training. They are specifically trained to treat neck, back and other spinal injuries.

The next part of treatment is getting an accurate diagnosis. You will want to go to a licensed chiropractor for a proper diagnosis. A chiropractor is trained in the diagnosis and treatment of neck injuries and offer more than spinal adjustments. Many chiropractors offer massage, physical therapy and nutritional guidance.

The chiropractor will ask you about your medical history, when the neck pain started, and probably will take some x-rays. More than likely, your chiropractor will want you to rate the pain on a scale 1 to 10-- 1 being not very bad to 10 being the worst pain you have ever felt. This is a very important step as it helps to determine the effectiveness of your treatment.

You can receive Progressive Rehab. Progressive Rehab combines modern, often very fast acting chiropractic techniques with cutting edge progressive rehabilitation technology. Progressive Rehab targets the painful areas, determines the nature and cause of the pain, then designs a specific treatment just for you to keep you pain free. You can receive the advanced system of health care called Progressive Rehab from a Health Source chiropractor.