Pain Relief for Joint Disorders

A sore neck can really ruin your whole day. It can give you a headache, make your back hurt, and just plain make you grumpy. If you do have a neck ache or a lot of neck pain, you want to know what you can do to get rid of it. Here are two methods to try. 

Ice

If you have somehow injured your neck, you should ice it. The ice will help to lower the inflammation. While inflammation is a normal thing in an injury and is actually part of the healing process, it can get to be too much and hurt. The ice will also help to give you some relief from the pain of your injury. If you are going to ice your injured neck, then you need to know how to do it properly. You don't put the ice pack directly on your skin. You need to put a cloth or towel in between your skin and the ice pack. It is actually possible to get minor frostbite on your skin from the ice if it is directly on the skin. You also need to limit the amount of time that you leave the ice pack on. In general, you should take the ice pack off when the area goes numb to avoid damage. 

Heat

If the neck pain is due to stress, strain, or just sore muscles, then you don't want to use ice. You want to go with heat. Putting heat on your sore neck will help to relax the sore, tensed, and stressed muscles. The heat will cause the blood vessels to expand and bring more blood to the area, which also helps to loosen the muscles and make you feel better. There are different ways that you can use heat. You can do something like have a flannel bag filled with dry beans or dry rice which you can heat up and put on the area, or you can use a heating pad. If you use a heating pad, you need to be careful. Never put the pad itself right up against your skin, it could cause skin damage. Always use the cover or some other thin material in between the surface of the heating pad and your skin. Also, you should never fall asleep using a heating pad because you could damage your skin without knowing it. 

It's likely that you will have a sore neck many times in your life. They can be caused by things like strain from looking at your computer, stress, or injury. Knowing how to handle it can make your life easier. However, if you have neck pain that lasts over a long period of time and doesn't go away with these methods, it may be time to seek treatment from a medical professional.