Neck pain is one of the most common reasons why people seek care with our physiotherapists. While its treatment can be hold off, it will eventually become progressively painful to the point that it hinders even the most rudimentary movements e.g turning your head side to side, looking up to the sky.
In this guide, we will be discussing:
- What is considered 'pain'?
- Should I see a physiotherapist for neck pain?
- What neck pain treatments are available in Precise Rehab?
Before we talk about your neck symptoms, it is important for you to understand that pain is complex and multifactorial:
1. Pain refers to any unpleasant experience. This means all the soreness, aches, stiffness, tightness and knots you experience fall within pain.
2. Pain is not an indication of injury. Most people think of pain as a sign that something totally wrong is going on in the body (e.g. my joints are “worn out“ or "getting old"). Pain and injury are two separate things, and will be treated differently too.3. You can have pain without injury and injury without pain. Take for example, stubbing your toe against a door. There is a lot of pain with zero injury.
Should I seek physiotherapy help for my neck pain?
If your chronic neck pain lasts for more than 4 weeks, you may want to consider seeking professional help from a physiotherapist.
A good physiotherapist will prescribe you with personalised exercises to give you long-term relief. They may also address the lifestyle changes (e.g. better sleep quality, more physical activity, better stress management) to help you manage your symptoms.
Can't I just get away with a massage session at a massage house?
That is considered temporary relief– we advocate for long-term, sustainable relief and recovery so you would not have to compromise performance with pain.
The biggest difference between a physiotherapist and a masseuse is the training they received. Physiotherapists are musculoskeletal (i.e. muscle and joints) qualified health experts who had undergone years of clinical training to diagnose and treat your symptoms.
On the other hand, masseuse do no have clinical training and by default cannot diagnose your neck pain.
Physiotherapists are trained to provide an array of treatments such as dry needling, active rehabilitation, physical therapy, strength and conditioning exercises.
To become an accredited physiotherapist in Malaysia, physiotherapists trained for a minimum of five years at a university level.
What neck pain treatments are available in Precise Rehab?
Here is how we typically carry out our assessment once you come in for an initial assessment with us:
- Subjective assessment: a series of open-ended questions to help visualise and give in-depth context into your lifestyle and history. This will include the following:
- Current condition – your main complaint
- Nature of pain
- Visual analogue scale (VAS) – a measurement instrument most commonly used in rehabilitation to measure the amount of pain a patient feels ranging from none to maximum
- Aggravating or easing factors
- History of injury (if any)
- Nature of job or general lifestyle
2. Objective / Physical assessment
- Observation of neck and shoulder (anterior, lateral and posterior view)
- Active & Passive end range of motion of neck
- Quality of movements of shoulder blades in arms flexion and abduction
- Quality of shoulder blades retraction
To watch how a real-time initial assessment is played out, you can watch our latest Precise Live below:
What now?
We understand how your neck soreness is real and it can be quite a distressing experience. The best thing you can do for yourself at this stage is to relax and do pain-relieving exercises to ease your mind off of it.
Once you are fairly relaxed, there are a few neck pain exercises you may consider trying:
1) Retraction of neck – chin tucks (view one of our video tutorials here)
2) Depression of shoulder blades
3) Retraction of shoulders
If you are looking to start physiotherapy treatment for neck pain with Precise Rehab, you can book an appointment with us via the form below. All of our five locations have resumed operations in Bangsar, Desa Sri Hartamas, Shah Alam, PassionFit Gym (The LINC KL) and WorkOut Studio (Kuchai Lama).