3 Keys To Complete Neck Pain Relief (Personal Experience) || WBWL EP 63

This episode breaks down 3 key things I honed in on to get rid of years of stubborn neck pain.

It’ll break down:

1. Things that didn’t work for my neck pain after a car accident, and what you may want to be careful about.
2. Combines physiology and physics to help you understand how to improve the mobility in your neck immediately.
3. How stress can be a significant factor in increasing neck pain and 5+ strategies to combat stress in your life to reduce neck pain.

Number 1 may surprise you the most and it's just minutes into the podcast episode.

This episode is a recording of my latest livestream inside my Facebook group which is called Pain Relief Support Group for Busy Parents.

If you’re interested here’s the link to join: https://flexwithdoctorjay.online/group

Transcript

0:12

All right. Hello everybody, Dr. Jay here and I'm super excited to share with you guys today on some of the key things that have helped me to become pain free, especially when I've had a lot of neck and back issues. So if anybody here has had. Chronic neck pain or it's spread into their headaches or they have a mixture of neck, shoulder and upper back pain. These are all things that I've actually gone through myself and I want to have a very thorough conversation in terms of how you can truly get out of pain for good. So a lot of people think that my neck pain will never get better. I've heard it so many times that my neck will never get better because the doctor said I have a herniated disc or I have a, I have something in my neck like I've had neck surgery and I know I'll never get better. Or maybe people accept their age. They say that, I'm 50 years of age. So next stiffness will always be a part of who I am and my daily. And I feel bad sometimes because a lot of people, they try a lot of treatments. I've heard a lot of times that people have tried chiropractic. They've tried some little bit of dabbled with physical therapy or massage. They've tried, yeah. Postural correction and changing their ergonomics, changing the way they stand at their desk, changing their pillow. That's one of the biggest things that I hear all the time is changing up the pillow. And truth be told, that all of that's great, but there is a specific, more active and holistic way of Completely changing how your neck feels on a daily basis. And I'm very excited to share with you guys the things that I've done for my own neck issues. The first thing first, I just want to give you some foreground. And also, if you have any questions, feel free to drop them into the comments. If you find this helpful also, feel free to let me know, that was helpful. But the first thing that I want to tell you is, back in the day when 19, 20 years of age, I actually went through a pretty bad car accident. I was driving to like a black Friday type of shopping events. And there was, I think for that matter, I had a couple of people in my car. And all of a sudden I felt my car make a little jiggle. We were driving 75, 80 miles an hour. All of a sudden that wheel actually spun off. It actually spun off my car and I saw the wheel like passing by my right hand driver's side. And all of a sudden our car spun violently. Into an island at 80 miles an hour. It was really scary, but also at the same time I actually got probably got the worst of it just because I think I was the one driving and my, my body went through hell after that. It was really hard for me to straighten my straighten out my body. Even sitting for long periods of time, like I can sit for longer than 10, 20 minutes without, Having to get out of a car or having to change positions. So I sought out tons of treatment, thousands of dollars of treatments, literally from I've sought out a Nuka chiropractor where they basically just work at the levels of your neck. I did frequent massage like every other week. I probably spent at least six to 7, 000 on a lot of these treatments that I've. Thoughts were going to be a more sustainable solution, right? And eventually just wean off of it. But the thing is I couldn't wean off of it. And I think one of the reasons why was because they weren't teaching me anything about how to actually get rid of the neck pain myself. I was Almost reliance on a chiropractor. Every time I went in, they'd send misaligned, they realign my neck, they get me on the table and do some sort of procedures on the side of my neck and I'd feel better for short term. But then, whatever it was my neck would just go back into the same amount of pain and that it was, and it would spread down into my shoulder blades. I would have some numbness in my hands. So it was obviously a dark time in my life to the point where I did get depressed. I was very fearful of like how I would feel. 10 years from now. I was like 10 years from now. I want a baby. I want a family, but even then I was scared. She even started a family because In my heart, I was saying like my, I would not be deserving of a son or daughter if my neck just hurts on a daily, anything that I do, like picking up boxes or, just doing the dishes and looking down for a long period of time, I couldn't do that. So I wouldn't be able to look down at my daughter or my son. So back in the day, in the early twenties, it was dark times where I really didn't know what my future was going to hold. And I know a lot of my clients, they may actually feel this way as well. They may feel that they're. Isn't a viable solution out there. They feel that they might live a life full of pain, but the thing is You know, what I'm telling you is that there are specific key things that I know will help you. And one thing that I didn't make, just to let you know, so I want to go through my three principles in just a second. So I want you to hopefully stay here. I'm going to demonstrate that, or I'm going to show you guys and explain exactly what it is. But I also did develop a Neck Pain Roadmap. It's a huge document that gives you really key insight into the three things I'm going to tell you, but also gives you actually exercise demonstrations. It pretty much is a culmination of all my best neck pain trainings. So if you're interested in getting hands on that roadmap doc, and it's a huge document that I think I know will help you for sure, just comment the word roadmap and I can actually send that to you. Just comment the word roadmap. And Me or my team will be able to send it out to you. Okay, or again, that neck pain roadmap. So let me dive into actually the very first thing. So let's go into basically the key, the first key, the absolute first key necessary. To have a pain free neck. And the first one is you need to start strengthening your neck further. So strengthening can come in many different forms. If I push my hand into my head on the right side, you're loading up the right side of your neck. Or if I put my hand on the back of my head or I push the back of my head into a pillow or a wall, for example, you're extensors. So Just like how a bridge like I live in San Francisco. So think of the Golden Gate Bridge. You have basically the metal pieces in the middle. And then you have the guy wires on the sides and the guy wires aren't just for show. The guy wires actually creates stability, right? It has a lot of tension that actually. Keeps the bridge from from swaying or from being deterrent to weather. So if the guy wires weren't there, then that bridge would be rendered more unstable. So that's a key thing because when we're looking at the pillars of our neck is that we have. We have muscles that can be strengthened. Basically, those guy wires can be strengthened. Those are our upper traps. There's muscles in the back called our levators or our cervical extensors. There's also our scalenes. And I think a lot of people, they think that when there is pain in these areas, they think, I just need to stretch it. And that's what other physical therapists would say too, is stretch your neck. You gotta massage your neck. You got to, bring your ear towards the right side to stretch out the left upper trap, and you're going to hold that for 30 to 60 seconds. But if you think of it this way, it's basically, if you stretch something, then it makes the guy wires actually looser, right? If those guy wires are looser, then that might not be the right thing you want to do because now the bridge is rendered unstable. Okay, so this is one of my best analogy because literally like our upper traps, like these muscles on the sides of our neck, it literally looks like the guy wires of a bridge, right? So it's pretty cool how this analogy actually rings pretty true. If you just stretch your neck all day, while it might feel good. Nobody me. There's barely anybody in this world that are going to say, Hey, my, my, my neck doesn't feel good when I like stretch it. But usually sometimes afterwards your neck feels worse. Sometimes your neck it, you feel maybe 30 seconds of relief while you're doing it, but all of a sudden your neck pain just comes back. So what should you do is instead of stretching those guy wires, you should think about strengthening those guy wires. And there's a lot of products out there. There's a product I really like that they've, I've been affiliated with them before. It's called the iron neck and the iron neck is a great exercise because you attach this object to your head. When you attach the object to your head, there's a little rope that actually pulls you in different directions and actually strengthens and isometrically strengthen your neck, giving more stability to those pillars of your neck. Okay? If you think about how your neck is like any other muscles, like these upper trap muscles, these scalenes and all these muscles around your neck. They don't always need stretching, right? It's stretching bad. No, but it's overstretching bad. I think so. I think that strengthening your neck is actually the more longterm piece. So if you strengthen your neck muscles for the longterm, that can really be one of the most pivotal pieces to you feeling a lot better on a daily basis. Okay. And I'll give you an example is I'll do this in the camera is that while we might stretch her neck, right? You can see me side bending my. right ear toward my right shoulder. I'm feeling a kind of a stretch on my left side. This is something that I never do yet. I never have pain, right? So it's I don't do this at all. So if I have a pain free neck right now, then clearly, possibly this type of exercise is not really indicated. But if you think of it this way, it's like sometimes when you overstretch something, or let's say you fall asleep. On an airplane, for example, and your head, your head falls asleep on that window. Have you ever woken up and the side that's been overly stretched for a long period of time, that side often feels pretty crappy. It feels oh my gosh, like I got a kink in the neck. I slept wrong, right? And yeah, people sleep wrong, but they often sleep wrong because something's been over stretched for a long period of time. So like I said, just to prove my point is stretching the most long term solution to neck pain relief. No, I'm living proof of that because I rarely stretch my neck, but do I strengthen my neck a lot? Do I do shrugs? Do I do a lot of stability exercise for my neck? You bet. I do a lot of that. And that's why even if my neck feels a little kinked up, I'm able to actually get past that really fast. Okay. Even just to prove it to you is try looking to the right try to pull your shoulders just Relax your shoulders down. Look to your right. See how that feels. See like the tightness, the sensations, whatever you feel. Does it feel stuck? Try looking to your left. See how that feels as well. If anything, maybe I feel like maybe some slight tightness on my left side. Now what you do is now think about this way, bring your shoulders up and bring your shoulders slightly forward and bring your chin down into your shoulders. Bring your chin down in between your shoulders. Now, when you do that and you can support yourself like with your arms, so let's just hug your arms together now. Bring your chin to your left, right? So rotate your neck to the left. And now I can look further and my neck doesn't hurt as much. And that's actually what I'm doing is I'm tightening up the guy wires. I'm actually contracting those muscles. And then when I look to the right. Even that feels better too. So not to say live your life with your shoulders, like up to your ears, but it's just my proof to say that your range of motion your, the way your neck feels every single day is a product of if you strengthen your neck for the longterm, put some emphasis towards doing that two to three days a week, it can really make a huge difference. All right, so let's go into number two. So number two is to make sure to take care of the area right below, which is your thoracic spine. So your thoracic spine is anything below the collarbones down to basically your lower rib cage. And that's basically your T1 to T12. That's the 12 thoracic segments. So a lot of times when you are having a lot of neck tension, is that if your neck can't move very well and you're feeling like a stiffness or flare up. It's always a great idea to get the upper back moving the thoracic spine. So the thoracic spine can move in different directions. The one is extension, which is arching backwards, lifting your chest up towards the ceiling. You can also point your chest down towards the floor and round your back. That's also called thoracic flexion. And then also what you can do is you can go through a thoracic rotation. Right and left, and you can also go through side bends left and right. So those motions right there are really key. If you promote those motions more throughout the day, it's pretty incredible how you keep your thorax moving. And all of a sudden, your neck actually feels better. Now, why is that? One I think a small theory here is that whenever one area of the spine gets tense areas above and below also get 10. So if you're not moving your upper back and you're just sitting at a computer all day, then likely the upper back or your thorax. Get stiff, which also in turn, get your neck stiff as well. The other thing here is that your thoracic spine is very much connected to your breathing muscles, right? So your thoracic spine, one of your attachment sites for your diaphragm, which is your primary breathing muscle, okay, attaches to your lower ribcage and actually attaches to the lowest segment of your thoracic spine, T12. If you are not If you're noticing, so here's the thing. It's a cascade effect. If your upper back gets stiff, that means your rib cage gets stiff. And if your rib cage gets stiff, then that means your diaphragm can't. contract through full range of motion. And if your diaphragm is not able to contract properly, then you're actually getting in less breathing, right? Because basically your ribcage gets stiff, the diaphragm can't move as well. So you're getting in kind of less oxygen per breath. And if you get less oxygen, your body is. Deoxygenated, and everybody's deoxygenated, obviously try squeezing your forearm, like with one hand for a long period of time. Eventually you squeeze that forearm, you're cutting off blood supply to that hand. Eventually that hand's going to go numb. Eventually it's going to get tingly. Eventually it might hurt. So that's essentially what we're doing. Maybe six to eight hours a day is we're not moving our thoracic spine where we're sitting at our desk. We're not breathing as much. We're really focused on our work. So we're not thinking about. Actually getting in a full breath, if you will, okay, and then when that happens, then usually you start to feel a lot more upper back as well as neck tension. Okay. Just want to say that taking care of your thoracic spine, actually getting a lot more mobility throughout that those segments are going to make your neck feel better. The last little point there about the thoracic spine is, if I rotate my torso to the right. And I'm looking straight forward like at the camera in front of me, or I'm looking forward is that's relative cervical rotation to the left, right? So if I turn my torso to the right, technically, my chin is above my left shoulder. So I'm actually relatively rotating my neck to the left. Okay, same thing goes if I like, for example, if I side bend. to the left. That means that if I keep my neck up in proportion to the rest of my body, my neck is in relative right side bend. Okay. If I, especially if I'm going to the left, so you're looking at how. Every segment of the body is connected, right? The whole body is one big kinetic chain is pretty incredible what the human body can do, but also with a human body can't if you don't give it enough love, if you don't move more, right? So when you're not moving your thoracic spine your next not getting the love with it. So looking thoracic spine motion is that whenever you rotate or side bend to like the left or right, your neck is. By way of just maintaining equilibrium is actually getting some movement at the same time. So your neck actually feels better while you're moving your thoracic spine. Okay. Sorry. So let's dive into number three. Number three is really important. It's a little bit more holistic in this way, but it is really about managing your stress levels. And there are obviously dozens of ways to do that. Okay. You can take breaks away from your computer. You can go outside, you can get as much sunlight as you can. Another thing that I really like to do is I like to take five minute breaks to just lie down and breathe and just stretch out. So those are a lot of things I do to de stress. Another thing that I practice every single day is gratitude. So gratitude actually has been shown to secrete oxytocin, which actually mitigates and dampers cortisol levels. So like looking at all these things, because stress. Is also, it can manifest itself as a physical entity of pain. When you are more stressed, you'll notice that your neck rolls up into a specific position. You notice that you might be like, grinding your teeth. Your jaw muscles might get tight. Jaw muscles might get tight. Leads to either headaches. It's more concomitant neck pain. So when we are more stressed about anything about our finances, our relationships, about our own health, if we've hit a midlife crisis, that in itself creates stress, it creates a lot of mental stress and mental stress again, can manifest itself as physical symptoms. Read the book, John the Sarno. It's a great book that is available to anybody, but that book is also pretty telling of how a lot of times we have a basically a beaker of water, right? And that beaker of water, we can only fill it up so much. Before eventually that water kind of dribbles onto the floor because we're exceeding our capacity and you're perceiving like that water is stress and eventually you look at like that beaker of water, which is like your stress beaker and let's say there is a beaker underneath and that beaker underneath is like physical. So as that water overfills, eventually that water starts to fall either onto the floor or fall into another beaker, which is like your physical beaker. Increasing the stress up to a level that you cannot tolerate, eventually, it's going to start to a lot of that water or stress is going to bleed into you feeling neck pain or low back pain and a lot of people, they will carry a stress in different places. Like I said, a little strategy I can give to you right now is like adequate sunlight can can really have a huge play on serotonin levels. Also convert some of your cholesterol into vitamin D and also can allow you to get better sleep. Then you also have gratitude, again, secretion of oxytocin can damper the effects of cortisol. And then also you're looking at you're looking at just general movement, right? Exercise. Exercise secretes dopamine. Dopamine is our pleasure signal. Or it's sometimes it's a product of addiction too. So I love the fact that whenever I'm stressed out or whenever I start to feel any symptoms, I can Always go towards exercise as the main line of defense to feel a lot better, so for me, exercise is always going to be my outlet. It's also the thing that obviously keeps me strong. Like I said, exercise is a really important aspect of strengthening the neck. That's a form of exercise thoracic mobility. That's another form of exercise. But again, Exercise comes into play again because exercise is a form of stress relief, right? When we're moving our body, we generally feel better. One of my favorite quotes that I got from, I believe it's Tony Robbins, but motion is emotion. Okay. Motion is indeed emotion. So you cannot possibly like one of the greatest things I've seen is like you cannot possibly not smile. Like when you do something like this, you like, just put your hands up by your side. Pretend like you're lifting up like a globe over your body and just and I had somebody do that 20 times and they're like, they could be in the most like depressed or anxious state. And all of a sudden you have them do that. And all of a sudden they're like smiling. They're like, Oh, that's interesting. I feel a little bit better. My mood's a little bit better. It's yeah, do you feel a bit less stress? You're like, yeah, how did why is that? It's because you're breathing and you're actually inducing some motion into your body, which changes your emotional state. Like I said, that's why the 3rd one is also very important. The 1st 2 are definitely More kind of physiological anatomical, kinesiological things that you can really do on a daily basis to make your neck feel better. Like I said, number one was to strengthen your neck, bias yourself towards that versus stretching. Number two is take care of your thoracic spine. Get that moving into flexion, extension, rotation, and side bend. And that indirectly also affects how the neck feels. And then number three is to definitely mitigate your stresses through some of the principles I just said, and that's not the only ways there. There are so many ways. Cognitive behavioral therapy affirmations it's changing your ergonomics to an extent. It's also taking your eyes off the computer. Spending less time on your phone and more time nurturing relationships around you. I think that's one that even for me, I'm so passionate about what I do and helping my clients that sometimes I really do get fixated to a computer and like I'm typing to my clients and I'm fixing their programs and, I'm doing a whole lot of stuff, but then again, I need to be a an example to myself. So when I'm. Immersed with helping my clients. A lot of times I'm forgetting about like my own kind of physical needs. So therefore I'll get away from the computer. I'll stretch my thoracic spine. I'll get outside. And those are things that I know will definitely help you. So if you have any questions, feel free to let me know drop a comment down below, or feel free to email me, Jason at flex structure. com. I also have a phone number a business line. So if you wanted to text me or call me for any help feel free to text or email text or. phone me 41597, sorry, 4159656580. Okay. 4159656580. Feel free to drop me a line, let me know how either my podcasts are, my live streams, and definitely give me feedback. I want to be here to not just set an example for I'm obviously a testament to getting rid of my own neck issues and escaping, It's five to seven years of pretty bad neck pain. And if I was able to do it, I know that you can do it as well. Okay. So if you have any questions again, drop them down below. Send me an email, send me a text, phone me and I'll see you on the next one. Have a good rest of your day. Have a great weekend. I'll talk to you soon.