Due to "sitting still and less movement", neck pain and neck discomfort have become common symptoms of office people, white-collar workers, and students. Such symptoms are often simply neck pain, stiffness, tension, discomfort, and there are no other upper limb, head, lower limb or even systemic symptoms, which can be attributed to "chronic non-specific neck pain".
The neck, like the waist, is prone to pain. The neck has 7 vertebral bodies that support a head, and many studies say that the greater the angle of the head, the greater the pressure on the cervical spine. For a long time, the ligaments behind the cervical spine will be elongated, and the ligament elongation is difficult to restore to the original length; for the muscles, it is more tense, such as the sternocleidal process muscle, the oblique muscle, will be shortened, and the short contraction of the muscle can be stretched by pulling and reducing muscle tone. The posture of probing the neck is very common in these people, due to the use of computers, the head is extended forward, at this time the upper cervical spine is extended, the lower cervical spine is flexed, and accompanied by a slight upward lift of the chin.
Shoulder stiffness is also a common symptom, due to the use of computers, incorrect posture, arms too far away from the shoulders, so that the trapezius muscles need more strength to maintain the lever, easy to tense, resulting in shoulder shrugging, chest and other bad posture.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > how to improve neck discomfort</h1>
First of all, posture is important. Poor posture, incorrect line of force, more likely to produce local pressure, muscle imbalance. The same posture for a long time can easily lead to a decrease in local blood circulation, accumulation of fatigue substances, muscle stiffness, etc. Therefore, regular exercise or breaking the posture of sitting still for a long time is very helpful in relieving neck symptoms.
A better posture should be: the computer display should be parallel or slightly below the line of sight, the hands should be as close to the body as possible, the elbow joint should preferably be supported to maintain 90 degrees, there is a good back support, the waist is straight (you can put a towel roll to support the lower waist to maintain the lumbar protothesis curve), the pelvis is straight, the hips on both sides are evenly sitting on the chair, the feet are on the ground, the knee joint is 90 degrees, the thighs are parallel to the ground, etc.
Usually do a muscle pull regularly. The sternocleidomastoid muscles, catetotomys, and superior trapezius muscles mentioned earlier are all muscles that are prone to tension, so it is also important for the stretching of these muscles.
The main point of traction is to maintain a static traction for 30 seconds at a time, so as to relieve the high tension of the muscles. In the stretching of the lower sternocleidomastoid muscle and the deltoid muscle, there is a detailed distinction between the two movements, the head is stretched when the sternocleidomastoid muscle is stretched, and the oblique muscle is stretched when the cervical spine is stretched.
The role of the sternocleidomastoid muscles is to flex the cisternal side of the neck, bow the head, and rotate to the contralateral side. Then the pulling is the opposite way - contralateral flexion, head up, and ipsilateral rotation traction.
The role of the deltoid muscle is to flex the neck ipsilaterally, flex the cervical spine forward, and rotate to the contralateral side, then the traction is to flex the cervical spine to the contralateral side, stretch, and rotate on the same side.
The superior trapezius muscle bundle uses contralateral flexion, bowed head and ipsilateral rotation and ipsilateral shoulder sinking traction.
Exercises the deep stabilizing muscles of the neck. The deep stabilizing muscles of the neck, mainly longuscapitis and longuscolli, play a role in stabilizing the cervical spine in the deeper cervical spine. In people with chronic neck pain, the cervical stabilization muscles are weak, while the external large muscle groups are overactivated. Therefore, exercising the deep muscles of the neck can make the large muscles "calm".
So how to accurately practice the deep neck stabilization muscles? Very simple, find a bed, the head pillow a small towel, imagine that there is an axis through your ears, your head will rotate forward with this axis as the axis, at this time you can touch the sternocleidomastoid muscle with your hand, this muscle can not become hard (if it becomes hard, slowly relax, try to find the head along the axis rotation action), less than 10 seconds, the neck will feel tired, so this action looks simple but there is more difficult to master, you can start from 5 seconds, gradually increase the time, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, multiple times a day.