Top 4 Symptoms Your Stiff Neck May Be Causing

Your stiff neck might be causing you a variety of symptoms other than neck pain. These can include one or more of the following:

  • Headaches
  • Arm Pain
  • Pins & needles in your arm &/or hand
  • Face, Jaw or Sinus Pain
  1. Headaches – Headaches are a very common symptom of neck stiffness. The upper neck joints are usually stiff and can refer pain through your nerves to your head – causing headaches and neck related migraine. Poor posture & ergonomics, weak & poorly controlled neck & upper back muscles, inflammation in the neck joints or soft tissue strain can all lead to headaches. At City Physio we can identify, through thorough assessment, which specific areas are contributing to your headaches and target our treatment to those specific regions or dysfunctions to alleviate your headache pain and your stiff neck.
Neck Headache
  1. Arm pain – Arm pain may be coming from a dysfunction in your neck. The arm pain comes about when your nerve or nerves coming out of the bony gap between your neck joints (cervical spine) is compromised. The neck joints may have degenerative changes, be stiff, have bony spurs, a disc bulge or disc degeneration in the neck (cervical discs) or inflammation of surrounding soft tissues or joints. Any one or more of these issues in your neck can lead to arm pain.
Arm Pain

Tight neck and shoulder muscles (muscle tension ) can create tender trigger points in the muscles of the neck and shoulders which can lead to arm pain. Trigger points develop from an overuse of specific neck muscles or from underuse or weakness of other deeper neck muscles your postural muscles leads to muscle becoming lengthened.

Some of the more common muscles near your neck that can lead to arm pain are the rotator cuff muscles – supraspinatus, infraspinatus, subscapularis and teres major. Tight trapezius, pectorals, latissimus dorsi, serratus anterior & deltoid can also contribute to arm pain.

Your City Physiotherapy Physiotherapist will target their treatment to ensure that all possible causes of our arm pain are eliminated.

  1. Pins and needles in your hand and arm – Pins and needles in your hand and arm are always due to nerve involvement. With pins and needles or numbness it is important to seek advice and treatment as soon as possible to avoid the nerves being compromised. Bulging neck discs are often implicated in pins and needles or numbness in the arm or hand.

At City Physio we target our treatment to alleviate your nerve symptoms and take pressure off the nerves.  This will most likely involve a combination of manual therapies aimed at nerve gliding and movement, joint mobilisation for your stiff neck, soft tissue release, posture & activity modification as well as exercise.

 

  1. Face pain /Sinus Pain/Jaw Pain – Face Pain, Jaw Pain or Sinus pain can also be caused by a stiff neck or neck muscle trigger points. The muscles of your head, jaw, face, the front of your neck and your upper trapezius muscles are commonly involved in sinus, jaw or face pain. Sometimes these trigger points and/or stiff neck joints can also lead to ear pain or sensation of loss of hearing. Clenching the teeth or grinding the teeth ( bruxism ) can lead to pain from overuse of these muscles. Often the teeth clenching and teeth grinding occurs subconsciously or during sleep.  Tension in these trigger points can refer into the face around the nose and cheeks – the sinus area –  producing pain similar to sinusitis.
TMJ, Sinus Pain & Face Pain Dry Needling treatment

At City Physiotherapy we use a variety of manual therapy treatments to address the overuse issues in the neck, face, jaw & head muscles.  We directly treat the TMJ ( temporomandibular joint ) dysfunction with manual therapies.  Dry Needling is a very effective treatment approach to assist in all face, sinus, head, neck and jaw pain. Our Physiotherapists are highly skilled in the use of Dry Needling for the face, jaw and head. Other treatments include stress reduction through a mindfulness approach, exercises, postural re-education & sleep posture modifications.

If you have any neck or other symptoms mentioned in this blog, our advice is to seek a physiotherapy assessment with one of our therapists to help get your pain and symptoms back under control.

 

 

 

 

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