Many people suffer from neck pain and, sadly, the remedy most often used to control the pain is medication like NSAID’s or aspirin. While these types of over-the-counter drugs are helpful if a person has acute pain say from a recent accident or from strenuous exercise, they can be damaging in the long run because the keep the patient from seeking the help they need to correct the cause of the pain.

That is the question that most people do not ask; what is the real cause of the pain? It’s an important question to be sure, but since it is never asked it is never answered. The patient with neck pain will sometimes suffer for many years, taking stronger and stronger drugs along the way, until one day the only remedy is surgical intervention. This happens every day to thousands of people all over the country and the world because they have never learned about the connection between the spine and the health of the body.

NUCCA Chiropractors believe that the spine and more specifically the first spinal vertebra called the atlas plays a very large part in the cause of neck pain. The atlas, because it is the first vertebra that the spinal cord must pass through on the way down the spine, can cause many problems if it is not aligned correctly with the axis (vertebra #2) and is putting undue pressure on the spinal cord and spinal nerves.

When the atlas is misaligned or ‘subluxated’ it will put pressure on the delicate nerves that pass through it, including the spinal cord and first 2 spinal nerves. One of the first symptoms that will arise from this pressure is muscle stiffness and pain, which can be in the neck itself and also in the shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, hands and fingers. Imagine; a simple thing as 1 bone out of place in your neck can cause all of those different body parts to have pain!

The best solution; put the atlas back in its proper position using a gentle NUCCA Chiropractic adjustment. In this way the atlas will stop putting pressure on the nerves, the muscles connected to those nerves will heal and the pain will subside and eventually go away completely.

Now doesn’t that sound better than having to take drugs all the time to control that neck pain?