Stabbing and persistent pain in the neck, when to notify the specialist?
The main sources of neck pain
The first thing to keep in mind is one thing: neck pain is something that will appear sooner or later in anyone's life and it does not have to be something to worry about. Uncomfortable yes, but neck pain is not related to any serious illness in most cases.
Moreover, it is often easy to know where the pain is coming from, since there are many activities that can injure this area of the body.
We must not forget that the neck is responsible for keeping the head upright and allowing its movement, something that makes its muscles flexible, but, for that reason, also prone to different injuries.
In this list you can see the main causes that cause neck pain:
· Poor body posture during working hours, especially if they are carried out while sitting;
· Exaggerated efforts both in jobs that involve the movement of large loads and in training sessions in the gym;
· Uncomfortable positions during sleep, something that happens very commonly in people who sleep on their stomach.
The three previous cases are the ones that most likely cause neck pain. It is easy to see that none of these causes is a disease, so the neck pain caused by them will have to disappear in a short time.
Symptoms of a cervical contracture
Neck pain, which after all is nothing more than a contracture of the muscles located in the cervical area, is accompanied by a series of symptoms that are very well known by the doctors who treat it and by all those patients who have once been impeded by him.
The main symptom of all is the pain that manifests itself in a more important way when the head is held up for a long time. This is what happens when you drive or work for hours in front of a computer screen. In these two cases, not being able to relax the neck muscles causes the pain to reach its maximum intensity.
Another very common symptom is stiffness that prevents you from moving your head comfortably and naturally. As there is an injury in the area, the muscles that have to make it possible for the head to move naturally see their activity limited, which the person notices as great difficulty moving the head.
The two previous symptoms are the most common, but not the only ones. These are other symptoms that can accompany neck pain:
· Spasms in the entire cervical area;
· Headache derived from stiffness in the area.
Concern about neck pain: when to request a doctor at home
The symptoms that we have seen before are those of a normal and current pain in the neck. There is no need to be alarmed by them, since they are usually the result of the sources that we saw in the first section.
If the pain is accompanied by tingling, loss of sensation and mobility in the arms or hands, or if a picture of general weakness is experienced, the pain must be examined by a specialist.
Moreover, if four- or five-days pass and the pain does not subside despite the fact that the symptoms that we have just mentioned do not occur, it will also be necessary to make a visit to the doctor so that he can evaluate the situation.
The most serious cases of pain in the neck area can have very different causes. We are talking about serious cervical injuries as a result of blows or falls, something very common in traffic accidents, or even some types of cancer.
Therefore, in all these cases, the concern for neck pain is more than justified and it would be good to receive instructions from an English-speaking doctor. It may be nothing in the end, but it is always better to be sure and have a good treatment so that the pain is not more problematic than usual.
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