How Does a Tens Unit Work on Muscle Spasm- Pain comes from electroechemical impulses relaying the pain message. A TENS unit interrupts this pathway. T.E.N.S stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation. It is often used to treat low back pain and neck pain. Tens units use a low voltage electrical current to induce pain relief. Continue Reading Article
Neck Exercises- Learn effective neck stretches and strengthening exercises for the cervical spine
End Neck Pain by Improving Posture- How Proper Posture Improves Your Spine Relieving Nerve Pressure- How does posture have anything to do with neck pain?--Neck pain comes from pressure on the nerves. How does this happen?--Usually pressure from a misaligned neck spine. When your spine is misaligned (some call that subluxated) it does not move like it should and in turn creates inflammation in that area. Either out-of-alignment spinal vertebrae (spinal bones) put direst pressure on nerves or the inflammation, or built up degeneration causes the pressure. Continue Reading Article
How to Reduce the Chances of Getting A Stiff Neck- A Stiff Neck.... Horrible especially when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is going to be one painful day. You are stiff, your neck hurts, you cannot turn your head, even brushing your teeth hurts. We get questions about how to treat a stiff neck all the time. Continue Reading Article
How To Avoid Neck Pain While Doing Abs- If you do your Abdominal crunches correctly with proper form, there is no reason to suffer from neck pain or sore neck. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is that involve there neck muscles while doing these exercises- that is a NO-NO. Bringing your head and neck forward puts unnecessary pressure on the neck and it is not healthy. So when you do your abdominal crunch look at the ceiling.Continue Reading Article
Lots of great exercises for neck pain.You don’t want to overdo it as you can easily increase neck pain [ ultimately, that just defeats the purpose ]. My suggestion is to stick with simple forward flexion exercise, extension back, right lateral flexion (right ear to the right shoulder), left lateral flexion, right rotation and left rotation. For each movement, you don’t want to over do it , and only go to the point of pain. There are certain movements that you may not be able to do at all, and that's okay.
One more exercise I want to add is a great exercise for forward head posture. This type of head posture is prevalent in people who use the computer a lot and don't have good posture while doing it. You have probably heard of text neck or tech neck- well that FHP. It can be cause of neck pain, stiff neck, bad posture and headaches. Head Retraction exercises help with this immensely. Basically imagine that your head is a ball and it is your job to translate your head back. Hold it there for 5-10 seconds and do it again. Repeat 10 items. Basically you are bringing the head back in this exercise. Keep your chin tucked and look straight ahead while doing this exercise.
A few other things that can help is using a hot and cold pack. Heat will actually help to ease muscle spasms and relax the neck muscles. Another great idea, use a special contoured neck pillow so that you have the right posture for sleep at night. Finally, you can use a natural pain relief gel like sombra to help you ease trigger points in the neck. Incidentally, Sombra works even better with moist heat therapy.
What is the First thing you are looking for when Buying a Pillow?
Comfort
Size
Looks
How it helps me with my pain
How does it help me sleep
Having the Right Pillow at Night is So Important No Matter What part of the World you are in.
Recently at Arc4life we got a call from Italy from a customer who had previously purchased our Arc4life traction pillow (large size). He has degeneration in his cervical spine and also a pinched nerve. He was visiting for 4 weeks and realized quickly that he would not be sleeping well without his pillow. So he called us and we shipped it. It cost around $80 to ship but he got in about 3 business days. Not bad.
I think this story shows you that if you have a pillow that works for you- then you need that to sleep well. Particularly if you suffer from neck pain, numbness and tingling or shoulder pain. Finding a pillow that works can be a miracle because it actually helps to you to fall asleep and stay asleep.
What Makes a Pillow Great and Makes you Want to Sleep on it Night After NightIs the Pillow the right size?
A Pillow that is Too big, flexes your head forward if you are laying on your back; when on your side it can crank your head sideways. The opposite goes if it's too small, not enough support when on your back and the head bends down toward the mattress when on your side. Some pillows are even designed for a certain size person. For this reason they may come in a small, medium, and large. One big misconception is that if you have a king size bed then you need a king size pillow. That's not true; have your throw pillow or shams be the large ones but have a pillow that works with your neck.
The Arc4life traction neck pillow (see image below) is one example of this. It comes in 3 sizes:
It is important to know foam is usually more on the firm side. Fiber pillows can be made more firm or not by the amount of fiber you add.
Foam tends to be more firm. Always be sure to ask however; I know of a pillow that comes in a "soft" selection, but it's actually more firm than another regular pillow I have?
By the way foam can be foam but it can also be a memory foam. Foam is more firm but memory does conform to you somewhat.
Water and air pillows can be fairly firm too but you can take some out allowing for more give.
Does it have an odor or a particular smell to it?
I just got off the phone with someone who was extremely concerned about this. She had just bought a new pillow that she spent a good deal of money on. The problem was that she couldn't sleep on it. The smell it gave off really irritated her. Your pillow should not have an odor. At arc4life I deal with hundreds of pillows, none of our pillows have an odor; and if they did I wouldn't sell them!
Does it give you adequate support?
Does it feel good to start but then you awake in pain. This can be an example of some feather pillows. It seems good to start but completely collapses given time.
Typically neck pillows may lose their support over time, this is normal. Do you use it every night? Do others it the family use it sometimes? This is one way you know you might be ready for another one. Also, if you saw your headache symptoms disappear when you started using the neck pillow, but now those symptoms are returning? Your pillow may be losing support - Time For A New One!
No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. -Lin Yutang
Does it get hot?
Some pillows seem to retain a lot of heat; you don't want that. This is one thing you don't want waking you up at night. Now, if it's really hot in your house your neck may sweat and you may get hot. I'm not referring to that - with all conditions seemingly normal your neck shouldn't be sweating because your pillow gets too hot.
I knew someone who always wound sit up against her pillow to read; so of course it got warmer. If you know you are doing something like that than there's your problem. That's an example of a time where a pillow is going to get warmer no matter what. From just sleeping on it your pillow should not get really hot however. Your skin is on it versus the previous example where you may have a heavier shirt, a blanket over your lap, etc...
I sit right up against something called the "Bed Wedge" when I read. This way there's no chance of my pillow starting out any warmer than it should.
Does it more easily carry mites and allergens?
You pillow should be either hypoallergenic or non allergenic. Why? What good is it if you are sleeping 1/3 of your life on something that's triggering your allergies. You're waking up with blood shot eyes, congestion, and maybe a sore throat. If you are truly allergic or very sensitive, get an allgery free pillow. An example is the stress ease pillow at arc4life. You can wash this pillow in the washing machine. The Stress-ease allergy pillow features high moisture vapor permeability for comfort and is made of fabric with extremely small pore size
