Home Remedies for Neck Pain

Neck pain is not a good feeling. If you have ever experienced this, you know that it is one of the most activity hindering occurrences you can experience. If the pain is unbearably bad, it can leave you sitting out of nearly everything for days on end. Of course, you don’t want to experience that! If you do indeed have pain within your neck, or would like to help reduce your chances of getting it, try these home remedies.

Gracefully Move Around

Although neck pain makes everyday movements very difficult, they should be followed through with none-the-less! Practitioners used to tell patients to stay as still as possible, for as long as possible, in order to alleviate the pain. However, this approach does not necessarily work. Of course you don’t want to be jerking your head in every direction, but you can take very small movements. Work on easing your way back into your daily activities as soon as you can. These simple little movements will help stretch the painful muscles, and get them working normally again.

Ensure Good Health Habits

If possible, stop doing the activities which irritate your neck. In order to fully eliminate neck pain, you must get rid of the source. Perhaps your job is extremely stressful and causes muscle spasms throughout your body. Of course it is probably not reasonable to quit work altogether, but perhaps you can lighten your work load a bit. Also, you can do strengthening exercise, along with strategic stretching every morning to help prevent the pain from occurring in the first place. Stretching out your muscles will make them more flexible, and able to take on more tension without pain. If you smoke, this may also contribute to your pain. Smoking essentially delays your muscle tissue from repairing itself because is lowers your supply of white blood cells. Build your immunity and quit the cigarettes.

Hot or Cold?

There are many different methods involving heat which can help alleviate your neck pain. Some may argue that heat is better for muscle tension while others argue the opposite. However, most individuals would agree that heat indeed helps alleviate the pain best. Try applying a heating pad to your neck for 15 to 20 minutes multiple times throughout the day. Or, you may decide to take a warm shower as a substitute for one of those heating pad treatments. No matter what you do, make sure you don’t keep the heat on for more than 20 minutes. Having too much heat will actually enhance the swelling, and perhaps lead to more pain.