Do You Have Tech Neck?

Dr. Tony here, continuing our series on headaches and migraines. And I wanted to share an interesting conversation I had in the adjusting room a couple days ago. It centered all around the connection between posture and headaches. And the most common postural issue we see that relates to headaches is something called forward head carriage or forward head posture. It's where the head, instead of being over the shoulders, is poking forward. When you look at a spine instead of that neutral cervical curve, what it does is it pushes this forward, flattens that curve out and really compresses and tightens the muscles in the upper cervical spine. Now the problem is that the nerves that go up around the head come from there. So if you put extra pressure on those, that can be a trigger for headaches and migraines. And we all know what that comes from, right?

It can be called tech neck because it's holding devices in our hand or laptops or looking down all day long. Now here's the real simple, easy fix for that. In addition to the adjustments, we teach a lot of our patients something called the chin tuck exercise. Very simple, something everybody can do. So what you do is you simply find a surface you can rest your head against. It can be a wall, even the headrest in your car and you do this simple thing. Tuck the chin, hold the head back. Hold that for about 30 seconds, do it two or three times a day. That can help dramatically improve and take the pressure off some of those muscles and nerves in the upper part of the neck and help with headaches and migraines.

Be Well,

Dr. Tony