Your job may be a constant source of headaches. Sitting at a desk, staring at reports and your computer screen can cause the muscles in your neck and shoulders to become tense. The tense muscles irritate nerves that extend up into your head and cause a headache. A chiropractic care center offers a number of ways to relieve that muscle pain and your headaches. Here is how you can get relief by visiting a chiropractor.
The Causes of Muscle Irritation
Straining your neck and shoulder muscles at work can cause the following problems:
- reduced blood supply to the muscles
- small muscle fiber tears
- constricted blood vessels
- pain and inflammation
These issues irritate the nerves, sending pain into the neck, head, shoulders and arms. The chiropractor uses soft-tissue release techniques to relieve the stress on the muscles and nerves, reducing inflammation, increasing circulation, and relieving your pain. Your doctor will use a combination of hot and cold therapy, massage, and physical therapy to relax the stressed muscles. Two techniques, active release and myofascial release, target specific muscles affected by stress.
The Muscle Release Approach
Chiropractors are specialists in how the muscles and nerves work together around the spine. They have been trained in techniques that relax muscle tension in those areas. Sprains, strains, and overused muscles respond to these techniques and give you relief. Work stress and sports injuries are good candidates for these chiropractic techniques.
Active Release Techniques (ART)
Tiny tears in the muscle fibers causes scars in the tissue. These scars prevent muscles from expanding and contracting naturally. Your doctor will use this technique to break up the scar tissue and gradually stretch the muscle out to its normal length.
The doctor will feel for areas over the muscles in your neck and shoulders that are warmer than the surrounding area. This indicates some level of muscle fiber damage and scarring. They will then use a massage technique to stretch the muscle out and reduce the tension. By adding pressure over the warm areas, they break up scar tissue preventing the muscle from relaxing.
Myofascial Release (MR)
In very tense muscles, a knot can be felt under the skin due to the contraction of muscle fibers. The chiropractor will use their hands or a special tool to apply steady pressure on the knot until the muscle relaxes. Eventually, the muscle will relax under this pressure.
These soft-tissue techniques are effective at reducing your muscle tension, pain and inflammation. Don't put up with the pain and headaches from work stress by seeing a local chiropractic clinic for help.
