Hi, I'm Michelle, and welcome to today's video. We're talking about neck pain,
and when you wake up with a really tight stiff neck. So this is called a wry neck,
it can happen when the joints in your neck become stiff and tight, and as a result,
the muscles over the top of the neck also tighten, so that you actually wake up and you feel that you
can't move your neck at all to maybe to one side or to both sides. It can feel really painful and
really debilitating. I’m going to be talking you through this in four steps. The first step
is obviously to get some pain relief on board, take your pain relief before you do anything,
because while your neck feels painful, that spasm is going to occur, and every time you
actually feel the pain, you're going to guard by actually tensing enough your neck muscles
even more. So step number one, get some good pain relief on board before you do anything.
Step number two, use some heat. Now, I’ve got two ways of getting heat here that I like to use. You
can either use a warm pack and that can go in the microwave for a couple of minutes before
you wrap that around your neck, and I’m going to be showing you some ways to use the warm pack. If
you don't have a warm pack, that's okay. You can also use another, like a way of using a,
making a temporary warm pack, is just to get a dishcloth, make it wet, you could use hot
water on that or you can make it wet, put it in a microwave proof bag, and I like to seal that off,
that goes in the microwave that you can actually use around your neck as well to give you warmth.
And you're going to be applying heat through the course of the day. Okay. So let's say,
you've warmed up your warm pack in the microwave. What you're going to need is a towel,
and the reason that you use your towel is to actually wrap that around your neck. So I'm
going to spread the towel out, and put it across the pillow. So you can use a pillow
at home. You might find that the pillow is too high and that you actually don't need a pillow,
you can just use the warm pack. I’m actually going to put that warm pack inside that,
so it's not directly against my neck and causing me pain. If your neck’s really sore,
it can be really hard to move up and down. So coming down sideways, and then lying on that warm
pack rolling over onto your back, and then what you do is you breathe that around your neck and
actually roll the towel, so that the neck is all circled by that warm pack. So I’ve got that lovely
warm pack against my neck, and all I need to do is lie here and relax for the next 10-15 minutes.
Now, I’m just lying on the warm pack. The first exercise to start with is just a really
gentle neck roll, so we're not looking to reproduce pain with these exercises,
and if you feel discomfort, I want you to stop straightaway, just stay still on
the warm pack. But if you can start to roll your head from one side, and back to centre,
move really slowly, and then roll to the other side. So obviously, you're just moving as far
as it feels comfortable for your neck. Even if you can move just a centimeter or two,
it's fine, when you first start out, just starting to get some movement back into your
neck. I’m going to talk you through sitting up comfortably and doing some exercises in sitting.
So I’m going to roll the towel, we're going to bring the child back in around my neck to give me
some support as I roll. So don't sit forward up, straight up forward, that's going to feel really
uncomfortable. The most comfortable way to move is using a towel around your neck, and rolling
onto one side so your neck feels supported. That should feel quite comfortable. Now, with the towel
around your neck, you can push up sideways and tip yourself up slowly over the side of the bed.
You might need someone to help you, but that's how you come back up into sitting. So in that position
then, we can actually then work at taking the towel off, taking the warm pack off, and it might
need to go back in the microwave. But using our body in this position, you got to start with some
exercises in this position, so we've been doing our rolling our head lying down, now we're going
to do it slowly from one side and back to center, and the other side. So you're just rotating,
you're not pushing through any pain back to center. If you can sit tall, lifting the crown of
your head, you're going to find that easier than slumping forward and down. So try to sit tall,
let's rotate one side and back. If you're feeling any pins and needles or numbness through your
fingers and through your hands, don't do these exercises, just get straight to medical help.
Now, if you can, you start to gently take your chin down towards your chest and come back to
neutral, again, taking the chin down, and with each successive attempt, you're trying to take
your chin a little bit closer down towards your chest and release. Okay, there's one
more thing that we can do to help ourselves before we get to our health practitioner,
and that is to use some ibuprofen cream or some anti-inflammatory creams on our neck.
So then if you can, get some creams onto your neck, you can use a number of creams,
you can use one of the typical Votaren anti-inflammatory creams,
and you can use it over the back of the neck, so right over the back and down, or you can use,
if you are into herbal, your herbal creams, your natural creams, you can use Arnica which is a
great anti-inflammatory, or, in Australia, we have a Fisiocrem as well, which is also another natural
cream. All these creams are anti-inflammatory creams, and they can go over the neck,
and through into the back of the shoulders, and you can just gently massage them in,
and you can be using those up to four times a day, and using them in combination with your heat.
So you can see we've gone through quite a number of steps, you're going to keep
your pain medication up during the course of the day, regularly apply your heat,
and you can be doing those neck exercises that I showed you with the heat pack every hour,
just progressively rolling and then moving into sitting if you can and doing your rotations and
your chin down to your chest, then if you can also, applying your creams. And finally,
that muscle spasm might actually release, and that actually might be enough to give you a
relief and start your neck moving again, and if not, call your regular health practitioner.
So I really hope this video has helped you today to manage your
neck stiffness. Thanks for watching today and I’ll see you next time.