Introduction
Pain in the neck can have many different causes. Mainly posture problems and chronically overstrained, tense muscles cause the pain in the neck area. With increasing age, signs of wear and tear in the cervical spine come to the fore. This often results not only in neck pain, but often the mobility of the neck is also limited. Your neck is tense?
Causes for neck pain
Medically, neck pain can be divided into four categories according to its origin: 1. mechanically triggered neck pain Most commonly, neck pain is triggered mechanically, i.e. by tension and dysfunction of the neck muscles or by wear and tear of the soft structures of the cervical spine (such as intervertebral discs or ligaments) or hard, bony structures such as the vertebrae. Mechanically induced pain in the neck can also be caused by Neck stiffness can be an indicative symptom of meningitis or meningitis, as it leads to reflexive tension of the neck muscles. The sensitive and inflamed meninges force the neck to be held gently, as any movement causes severe pain in the neck or head.
- Mechanically induced neck pain
- Neck pain not caused by mechanical means
- Transmission pain and
- Psychologically triggered neck pain
- Injuries like whiplash
- Vertebral body fractures
- Spinal instabilities or
- Malformations of the cervical spine (e.g. scoliosis)
Furthermore, mechanical restrictions in the neck area can lead to neck pain. The pain is often unilateral and radiates into the shoulder. Bad posture in everyday life and at work (e.g. years of computer or overhead work) promotes these mechanical complaints.
Blockages can occur in the small joints between the vertebrae (so-called facet joints), and then neck stiffness occurs, especially after periods of rest. The facet joints can also become inflamed and cause pain, which often radiates into the shoulder and arm. The pain is not caused by irritated nerve roots in the spinal cord (radicular pain cause), but by the inflamed joints (pseudo-radicular pain cause).
This can also lead to sensory disturbances such as tingling and numbness. Complex changes in the cervical spine or circulatory problems in the blood vessels that run to the head can cause neck pain that extends to the back of the head. In addition, symptoms such as 2.
Non-mechanical neck pain The non-mechanical neck pain is caused by disorders of the small vertebral joints in the cervical spine and by certain diseases of the musculoskeletal system. For example, rheumatoid arthritis (rheumatism), Bekhterev’s disease and some similar clinical pictures in the area of the so-called seronegative spondylarthropathies can lead to pain in the neck area. Neurological diseases such as nerve paralysis and lesions of the spinal cord are equally rare.
In women over 50 years of age, inflammatory muscle rheumatism (e.g. polymyalgia rheumatica) can lead not only to neck, shoulder and hip pain, but also to painful inflammation of the shoulder joints and wrists. In addition to the diseases of the cervical vertebrae and neck, shoulder joint diseases such as shoulder joint arthrosis (omarthrosis), inflammation of the bursae of the shoulder, tears of the stabilizing shoulder tendons or other shoulder injuries can also lead to pain in the neck. 3. transmission pain Neck pain, in the sense of transmission pain, can also occur during pathological processes in certain organs.
In addition, chronic neck pain often belongs to the group of transmission pain, because so-called trigger points are located in the tense and hardened muscles, near which pain fibers (nociceptors) are located, which are switched to continuous operation and lead to a spread of pain. 4 Psychologically triggered neck pain Not infrequently, neck pain can also have a psychological cause (especially chronically recurring neck pain) or be aggravated by psychological stress. Heavy stress at work or in everyday life promotes tension and quickly leads to pain in the neck area.Also with the so-called Fibromyalgiesyndrom, a complex disease pattern with various pain points on the body and further symptoms, one assumes among other things also psychological triggers for the neck pain. Internal diseases such as coronary artery disease in angina pectoris or a heart attack (myocardial infarction) can also trigger shoulder or neck pain.
- Wear and tear on the intervertebral discs (chondrosis and osteochondrosis) and vertebrae (spondylosis)
- Injuries and
- Malfunctions
- Swindle
- Ringing in the ears or
- Flickering of the eyes occurs.