Question
While doing dips I felt a twinge in my upper back, slightly to the right of the center, near the left portion of my right shoulder blade.  This happened last night and since then my neck and upper back have been very stiff.

If I try to touch my chin to my chest I can feel pressure and pain in my upper back area.  I can feel pressure on the spine, but I cannot tell if that's due to the muscle or to the spine.

When I rotate my head to the left or to the right, I also feel pressure and pain in the upper back lower neck area.  Moving my arms does not seem to cause pressure nor pain.  It's mostly head movements.

Is this just a strained muscle, or have I actually injured my spine?  Could it be a pinched nerve?  Is this serious enough for me to see a doctor, or will it go away after a few days?

Thanks for your help!

Answer
Vinay (cool name, by the way)

It sounds more like you have hurt your facet joint, actually called the zygapophyseal joint(s).  The hinges in our spine hae referrals, meaning they send pain messages from places that aren't injured.  In this case, it sounds like a sclerotogenous pain referral.  (Did I mention that I usually win at Scrabble?) The others I know of are dermatomes and myotomes.  Googling the result will probably have a picture of them somewhere on the web.   Correlating that pain with what you have is the chiropractor's job.

This is a sprain of sorts, and can really benefit from chiropractic care.  I don't want to use this as a form for what I in particular do, but in my Seattle chiropractic office we treat this sort of thing literally every day with remarkable results.

Hope this answer helps, I know you will find some great easy relief from this.

Dr. Peter Carr
Seattle, Washington
www.dynamicclinic.com