328 | Our Top Tips to Improve Neck Health & Reduce Pain

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Optimal Body Podcast.

[00:00:08] I'm Doc Jen.

[00:00:09] And I'm Dr. Dom.

[00:00:10] And we are doctors of physical therapy, bringing you the body tips and physical therapy pearls

[00:00:13] of wisdom to help you begin to understand your body, relieve your pains and restrictions,

[00:00:18] and answer your questions.

[00:00:19] Along with expert guests, our goal of the Optimal Body Podcast is really to help you

[00:00:24] discover what optimal means within your own body.

[00:00:27] Let's dive in! get him into their Pluma series, which is their first Walker series that they have just started to come out with. We are so excited. And if you want to check out Vivo Barefoot shoes and feel some of these benefits for yourself, go down to the link in the show notes and you can get a special 15% off that we only offer to our podcast audience using code T-O-B at checkout like the optimal

[00:01:41] body that's code T-O-B. So go down to the was looking at something earlier, one of the studies that it showed that this was like the fourth leading cause of people living with disability was having this neck pain. And millions of people suffer from neck pain every year. So it's like, okay, what can we do to help optimize it

[00:03:03] so that you're not disabled due to your neck

[00:03:07] or what you see on an image? Called the atlas so it's like the very top c7 is right where we transition into that thoracic spine or thoracic vertebrae It looks a lot more like a thoracic vertebrae And at c1 we get a lot more rotation, you know, that's one of the reasons you can turn your head side to side So well c7 is a bit stiffer. It's not as structured to get great mobility more like a thoracic vertebrae

[00:04:25] and and not that it's bad to get that forward head posture. It's gonna happen when we're working on a computer, focusing in on something, our head goes forward with our gaze, but if we're not moving out of that position and a lot of other things that we're gonna talk about. And we have to know that though the neck, we're gonna talk about is an area of stability.

[00:05:40] We have mobility throughout the whole neck.

[00:05:41] So you should be able to drop your ear toward one shoulder,

[00:05:46] that's side bending, drop over within the 30 days. So we're going to start with day one having nine self assessments plus a workbook to really understand what is going on within your body. And then 28

[00:07:00] days of consistent mobility only ranging from three to win prizes. So I really hope that you take this chance, learn about your body,

[00:08:21] come dive in with the community,

[00:08:23] come ask questions and move daily

[00:08:26] to start to an image that to their credit, they've been told by a provider, oh, you have degeneration in your cervical spine that is such and such, or is this bad, or I'm surprised, or even walking,

[00:09:44] or moving your arms. The crazy things that providerss, you can start to see some degenerative changes happening. And then people in their 60s also, no clinical symptoms or anything going on.

[00:11:01] 86% of males had some degenerative changes and 89% of females.

[00:11:07] So it's funny how it switched from. So what degree of progression I don't exactly know but like there was progression in 81% of people right sounds concerning. However only 34% of people reported some sort of symptoms now happening. Yeah. So that means there's less than 50% of people who saw.

[00:12:29] You know progression on their image but actual felt something within their body. So outside of that, though, our job is movement.

[00:13:40] So we want to talk about what you can do to optimize movement of your body.

[00:13:45] That's good to the meat of it. shoulders and our shoulder blades. So one thing that we can just start to do, um, you know, where I think when people hear mobility, they first think of, I'm just going to passively stretch then, especially for the neck. I'm just going to pull my, my head, my ear down to my shoulder. And we're saying, no, no, I want you to look lower.

[00:15:00] I want you to not look at the neck.

[00:15:01] I want you to look at the upper back and how that's moving.

[00:15:04] And when it comes to mobility, upper back, and shoulder health. So how funny is it that we're talking about it? We didn't even plan it that way. I know. Believe us or not. Like, didn't even plan about three of the specific areas that Jen focuses on in this mobility foundations course is what we believe would help our neck health

[00:16:21] if we gain mobility in it.

[00:16:22] And it's probably because when you were forming that course,

[00:16:25] you wanted to focus on those areas

[00:16:27] that we should be more mobile.

[00:16:28] Yes. When you open all the way up we like to encourage a deep breath into the rib cage and exhale so then you're expanding through the rib cage getting that good mobility through the rib cage and then as you exhale. Try to go a little bit further into that thoracic rotation of the upper back rotation and then. And then that upper back has to extend and rotate. So we get this whole movement of that upper body kind of working. And when we free up the movement of our upper body, our neck can now kind of naturally start to rest

[00:19:01] on top of our body.

[00:19:02] Because if your upper back is stiff and leaning forward,

[00:19:06] well, our neck come from that course. So come join us. But then going into neck. So stability, we talked about neck as being something

[00:20:20] that's stable, this doesn't mean rigid.

[00:20:22] This doesn't mean it doesn't move.

[00:20:24] Jen earlier talked about the six different ways

[00:20:27] that the neck can move into the side bends, to go down and back as the top as the back of the head comes up and forward. We end up kind of rotating up and back. Almost like there's a string at the back of the top of the head and it's kind of lifting you up. We get this backward motion with a little bit of a lift and that helps to kind of more so align and get into a more natural posture.

[00:21:42] One thing I do want to note too, and it should be linked down in the show notes as well, the YouTube version of the episode. But after we just work on this chin tuck, then we want to talk about, okay, how can we load

[00:23:01] it?

[00:23:02] How can we build endurance in those muscles?

[00:23:04] The great way to do that is lay on your back you remember kind of like that chin tuck position and then go into your regular workout. So anytime you're loading the spine through weight training and stuff like how can I kind of pull that head,

[00:24:23] again, not all the way back,

[00:24:25] not into an uncomfortable position especially when we go back to our other point about getting better mobility through our body, well, using our low rib cage to start to expand in our breath in a 360 degree pattern. So not just belly breathing and letting your belly relax. That's in addition, but putting your hands

[00:25:40] on the sides of your low rib cage and seeing,

[00:25:42] can I breathe into the sides of my low rib cage

[00:25:44] without my neck turning on,

[00:25:47] without my shoulders rising up to my ears. but many of those accessory breathing muscles attach into our thoracic spine, our neck, our shoulders, our shoulder blades and cause tension in all of those different areas. So if we're not breathing effectively, if we're using our accessory muscles far too much, that might be causing restrictions in movement in all of those areas or different aches or pains

[00:27:02] in some of those different areas.

[00:27:04] So breathing effectively can do so much can feel good and they feel good. But the number one thing that you need to be doing because you're not creating length in the muscles and I think that's what we believe about stretching, right? Is that, oh, I'm making the muscle longer now? Well, sometimes that muscle's already long because you're hanging out with your head forward. Instead, it's helping to reduce tension.

[00:28:20] And the number one thing like Dom just talked about

[00:28:23] that's gonna help to reduce tension is using the breath.

[00:28:26] So when you do those neck stretches, lock the medicine cabinet that is right up between our ears, which is our brain. And you're looking for a muscle relaxant. Okay, breathe. You know, breathe calmly enough long enough. You will, you know, release some of the tension in your muscles to relax them. It is that calm, parasympathetic style breath that helps us feel safe in new ranges of motion.

[00:29:41] It's when we're not breathing effectively and we're cranking into a stretch and we're

[00:29:45] breathing in a more of a sympathetic of what we're talking about all these areas that should be more mobile and how to properly and progress them for your own individual body.

[00:31:03] So I'm really excited about the course.

[00:31:05] And I hope you join us.

[00:31:08] I hope that was supportive.