How to Find Relief from Radiating Neck Pain

Neck pain alone is bad enough. It can prevent you from turning your head and keep you up at night. But sometimes, neck pain doesn’t stay in your neck. Instead, it radiates down into your shoulder, arm, and even your hand, amplifying your discomfort.

Don’t worry. The team at PhysioPlus Health Group can help resolve or manage radiating neck pain (officially known as cervical radiculopathy). Our physiotherapists can help pinpoint why you’re experiencing symptoms and provide strategies to overcome them.

In fact, we did exactly this for a recent patient, Melissa. Keep reading to learn what we did for Melissa — or call our clinic to learn what we can do for you. 

Interpreting Melissa’s Symptoms to Find the Cause

Melissa was in her early 60s when she began to experience a sharp pain in her neck. At first, she thought she could just ignore it until it went away. But then she began experiencing these additional symptoms:

• Pain that spread down into her shoulder and arm
• Numbness and tingling along the back of her arm and into her middle finger
• A sense of weakness in her tricep muscle

The only thing that seemed to help her symptoms was lifting her hand over her head, but obviously, this wasn’t a permanent solution.

Our team conducted a thorough evaluation to get to the root of Melissa’s pain — literally. We traced her symptoms to her C7 nerve root, located at the base of her neck. The nerve there was irritated by a herniated disc in Melissa’s cervical spine. Because the affected nerve spread down to her finger, she felt her symptoms throughout her arm.

Addressing the Cause to Help Melissa Find Relief

Most people experience herniated discs in their lower back. However, cervical herniated discs can happen — and just like their more common counterparts, physiotherapy is a great choice for resolving the condition. Here’s what we did for Melissa:

Step 1: Manage Acute Pain

We helped Melissa identify that her symptoms were worse when she turned her head to the left and when she tried to sleep on her side. To help her get a good night’s sleep, we provided her with a cervical pillow and suggested she sleep on her back for the time being.

During our sessions, we used soft tissue manipulation to help the muscles in Melissa’s neck and shoulder relax and to promote blood circulation to the area, which would help her herniated disc heal. We also gently guided her neck through its current range of motion to start working on her neck’s mobility.

Step 2: Stretch and Strengthen

Melissa’s herniated disc had likely developed due to age-related degeneration in Melissa’s cervical discs. This was compounded by the fact that Melissa was a writer who spent a great deal of time sitting at her desk, which negatively affected her posture.

To counteract these issues, we guided Melissa through several exercises designed to improve her range of motion and strengthen the muscles of her neck and upper back. The strengthening exercises were particularly important, as they helped support Melissa’s cervical spine.

Step 3: Prevent Future Occurrences 

After six weeks of physiotherapy, Melissa’s symptoms had largely resolved. However, we wanted to ensure she didn’t suffer another cervical herniated disc. We did a couple of things to help her accomplish this:

• Corrected Her Posture: We helped Melissa recognize when she was holding her spine in alignment, regardless of what she was doing.
• Created an Ergonomic Workstation: We worked with Melissa to redesign her computer workstation so that her monitor was at eye level — meaning she wouldn’t have to strain her neck to look at her screen.
• Suggest Simple Lifestyle Modifications: The fact that Melissa spent so much time sitting increased the likelihood of her developing a herniated disc. We helped her devise a plan to take frequent breaks throughout the day using a kitchen timer: 30 minutes of work, then 5 minutes of standing up and stretching.

Do you suffer from headaches, grinding of your teeth, clicking of your jaw or even ear pain? You’re not alone! These can all be signs of a condition known as Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMJ). 

This is a disorder of the jaw muscles and nerves caused by injury to the TMJ (the temporomandibular joint), which is the joint between your jaw and skull. A physiotherapist can take a look at your symptoms and help to diagnose you if this is what has been causing your discomfort!

If you’re living with this condition, don’t fret! The skilled physiotherapists at PhysioPlus Health Group are here to help you find true pain relief once and for all. Call our clinic today and cut the cord tying you to your pain!

Common Causes of TMJ Disorder

According to ChoosePT, TMJ disorder is so common that it currently affects more than 10 million people in the United States. That’s a lot! There are several reasons you may be experiencing symptoms of temporomandibular joint disorder.

Multiple factors contribute to the muscle tightness and dysfunction that characterize this condition. Most often, poor posture and neck alignment change the pull of the muscles that make your jaw move. This causes painful grinding and irritation of the temporomandibular joint.

Other causes may include:

• Poor alignment of or trauma to the teeth or jaw (malocclusion) 
• Clenching of the jaw (bruxism)
• Lockjaw (trismus)
• Teeth grinding
• Poor posture
• Stress
• Arthritis or other inflammatory musculoskeletal disorders
• Excessive gum chewing 

When you see a physiotherapist for pain relief for TMJ disorder, they may ask you questions about your daily life including stressors and chronic conditions that could be causing your pain. 

Symptoms of TMJ

There are several ways to know if you may be dealing with TMJ, although the best way to find out for sure is to visit with a PhysioPlus Health Group physiotherapist!

When a person has TMJ, the injured joint leads to pain with chewing, clicking, and popping of the jaw; swelling on the sides of the face; nerve inflammation; headaches; tooth grinding; and sometimes dislocation of the temporomandibular joint. 

The bad news is that this condition can make everyday things such as talking and eating pretty uncomfortable. The good news is that a lot can be done to help TMJ disorder, first starting with a thorough evaluation of your problem with our expert physiotherapists!

How Can a Physiotherapist Help with TMJ?

Dentists and orthodontists aren’t the only ones who can treat TMJ disorder. Physiotherapists can as well. At your first appointment with PhysioPlus Health Group, a thorough examination of your neck, shoulders, and thoracic spine will be performed to determine whether those structures are causing your symptoms. 

Once the root cause of your problem has been discovered, a comprehensive plan can be developed to quickly relieve your pain and restore natural movement to your temporomandibular joint. Furthermore, our physiotherapists will teach you techniques for regaining normal jaw movement for long-lasting results.

The focus of physiotherapy for TMJ is relaxation, stretching, and releasing tight muscles and scar tissue. In most cases, physiotherapy can resolve TMJ and prevent the need for surgery. 

However, in cases where surgery is absolutely necessary, physiotherapy is a vital part of the recovery process, as it helps minimize scar tissue formation, muscle tightness, and allows for a complete recovery.

Your recovery plan may involve a range of procedures and modalities, such as jaw exercises, soft tissue massage, joint mobilization, myofascial methods, electrical stimulation, and ultrasound. Your PT will also work with you on improving your posture as well since this can contribute to TMJ-related pain.