Neck pain is one of the most common complaints in our treatment rooms. According to The Royal College of General Practitioners, up to 20% of adults have experienced neck pain in their lifetime.

At Scott St Physiotherapy, our clinicians have a range of exercises and management strategies to help you with your neck pain.

What are the common causes of Neck Pain?

Muscular Neck Pain

This is probably the most common cause of neck pain that we see in our clinic. Patients typically complain of dull, diffuse neck pain around the base of the skull or shoulders. Patients often have a pulling sensation at the end of range or sometimes pain.

Muscular neck pain is usually related to your neck muscle’s capacity to withstand the loads you demand of them every day. Our heads weigh 5-6kg which has to be balanced from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep. Muscular neck pain can be caused by sustained postures such as studying or working at a computer for long periods, physical jobs or repetitive movements.

Acute Wry Neck

Have you every woken up with a crick in your neck and thought “I must have slept wrong last night”? This is a common complaint in our clinic. Whilst the exact mechanism is unknown, our best guess is a facet joint injury caused by a catching of the joint capsule. This is a very small injury with lots of discomfort for a few days, typically resolving within a week.

Radicular Neck Pain

The spinal cord runs down the vertebral canal with some nerve roots exiting the neck and making up the nerves which run down your arms. This means that you can have an injury in your neck, but your primary pain is in your shoulder blade or down your arm.

These nerve roots can be irritated for a number of reasons, usually from a disc bulge, facet joint irritation or arthritis which can give you neck pain, shoulder pain and arm pain. This pain is usually described as sharp or shooting pain, a dull ache in your shoulder blade and may be accompanied by pins and needles and/or weakness in your arm.

What can a physiotherapist do to help neck pain?

At Scott St Physio, we will diagnose your neck pain and help you understand why and how this came about. We will tell you how long it typically takes to improve, what you can do to help, and how you can prevent it from coming back. We will ensure that you leave your consultation understanding what is going on and how you’re going to get better.

We will often utilise manual therapy to give you in-session improvements in your pain. You will also be given a personalised exercise program to begin rehabilitating your neck pain at home.