Tips for Neck Pain Prevention

If you ever woke up with neck pain and stiffness, you probably understand why people want to prevent this from happening again. The mobility of the head is very important for almost every activity we do throughout the day. It hurts when you walk, push, pull with your hands, or write on the computer. Even looking at your phone can become painful.

Most of us have suffered or will suffer from neck pain at some point in our lifetime. In 13% of cases, neck pain keeps returning and becomes a real issue. And in most cases, the cause is related to muscle tension, awkward positions, and injuries in soft tissues found in the neck area. These include muscle spasms, trauma, and muscle strains. Other causes of neck pain include disc degeneration, arthritis, and spinal stenosis.

In some cases, preventing neck pain can be very difficult. Fortunately, that is not always the case, and people don’t usually have severe problems. In this article, we will give you a few recommendations based on lifestyle changes to protect your neck from injury.

In muscle-related and some other mechanical causes of neck pain, these prevention strategies will be useful to reduce the incidence of this problem:

Use a neck support pillow

Sometimes, the pillow you use is to blame for the pain. It can be too flat or too big. Or maybe it has a texture or consistency that is not helping you support the neck area. You may want to try different pillows to see which one works better for you. But here’s a recommendation: look for an option that keeps your neck in a neutral alignment with the spine. In other words, you need to maintain the natural curve of your neck without letting your head fall back or become flexed against your chest.

An orthopedic pillow can be a very good option in such cases. It provides extra support to the area under the neck while letting your head lie in a deeper place on the pillow. In some cases, you may also benefit from an adjustable bed if you incline the upper part of the body a bit. In these cases, a relatively flat pillow can be enough to complement your neck.