Conventional Medical Treatments
No Match For My Pain In The Neck!

by Darline Turner Lee, Physician Assistant, ACSM Exercise Specialist

Article Last Reviewed: Sept. 9, 2006

I have a bad habit of holding tension in my neck and shoulders. When I feel pressured or stressed, my shoulders migrate up towards my ears and the muscles along my neck and shoulders become rock hard under the strain. It is a painful state and I do what I can to avoid it.

As an undergraduate and graduate student, I had frequent headaches—upper backaches, stomachaches and irregular menstrual cycles. I had not learned that each life occurrence wasn’t a matter of life or death, or that performing poorly on an exam or receiving a less than stellar grade on a term paper did not mean the end of life as I knew it.

Early in my career as a physician assistant I had frequent headaches. I would come home from the office and obsess for hours over whether or not I had given a patient the proper prescription or treatment regimen. It took a couple of years in clinical practice for me to trust my skills and judgment as a clinician, thus reducing the frequency of my headaches.

When I first began having these headaches in college, I was prescribed muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatory pain relievers. The medications were effective, in that the headaches stopped. But they also turned me into a zombie--unable stay awake, collect my thoughts or focus on my assignments. Following a day of drug induced sleep, I would begin the cycle again, even more frantic because of the time that I had lost.

In graduate school I started jogging and found it to be a potent preventive measure against these headaches, relaxing the muscles in my neck and shoulders and easing my pain. I also began receiving neck and shoulder massages from my study partner, a massage therapist. Her gentle manipulations of my neck and shoulder muscles would release the knots lodged in these areas. Unaware of the physiologic benefits at the time, I just basked in the feelings of relaxation following our study sessions. I wonder what my test scores were following those study sessions???

After graduation, I settled into a job and apartment. My eating habits shifted from eating in the cafeteria, eating food from vending machines or other heat and eat foods to home-cooked, nutritionally balanced meals. A co-worker, who was a massage therapist, gave me regular full body massages. I noted a further reduction in the frequency of in my headaches.

According to the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA), massage affects the nervous system through nerve endings in the skin, stimulating the release of endorphins (the body's natural 'feel good' chemicals) to help induce relaxation and a sense of wellbeing. Massage helps reverse the damaging effects of stress by slowing heart rate, respiration and metabolism and lowering raised blood pressure. Massage has many other health benefits, least of which is it feels great. Isn’t that enough to make you want to incorporate it into your health regimen?

Years later while I was pregnant, the headaches reoccurred and I also began to experience numbness in my hands. I didn’t want to take any medication, yet I needed relief. I had prenatal massages, but still had symptoms. Late in my pregnancy I consulted Robin Fuquay, a clinical nutritionist and chiropractor. She felt my neck and noted one of the bones in my spinal column was out of alignment then performed a gentle adjustment and almost instantly my discomfort was alleviated.

Fuquay explained to me that in preparation for delivery, my muscles, ligaments and tendons had relaxed allowing one of the bones in my neck to press on a nerve. She said it was a temporary state that would correct itself after delivery. She also educated me about the beneficial effects that a balanced diet, adequate sleep, regular exercise, and reduced stress would have on my headaches.

As a traditionally trained, certified and licensed healthcare professional, I am amazed that preventive lifestyle habits and behaviors are not addressed in what is considered formal medical training. The benefits of chiropractic manipulation and massage were not covered in my medical training. Yet periodic chiropractic adjustments and massages along with diet, exercise, sleep and other stress reduction techniques have been far more effective than the pills I once took. Maintaining these practices has reduced my headaches to rare occurrences. These behaviors take a little more time, money and attention to implement, but are well worth the effort. The behavioral practices have the added benefit of not causing the stupor that renders me useless for the rest of the day as the medications did.

Our bodies have the uncanny ability to heal and sustain themselves. Each day we make choices that support our bodies or tear them down. The choices that enhance my body’s natural functions aren’t always easy. I don’t always feel like exercising. Sometimes I can’t control my worry and I don’t sleep well. But I know what will happen if I don’t give my body the attention it needs. The headache and neck pain cause far more problems than rearranging my schedule or paying for a massage or chiropractic adjustment.

Writer and motivational speaker Iyanla Vanzant poses this question to her readers and audiences, “How are you living?” If we each ask ourselves this question, we may find that the headache isn’t the problem at all.

Darline Turner-Lee is currently free of pain and stress. E-mail your behavioral health habits to her at darline@nextstepfitness.com