Monday, November 5, 2007

What to do with a stiff neck?

I would have opted to stay home yesterday if it weren't for DB's birthday dinner @ Spiral. I woke up with a stiff neck and it really bothered me to death. Last night, DH and I had our weekly massage fix at home and I specifically instructed the masseuse to be a bit more gentle on my neck than usual. She observed that a part of it was indeed swollen. When I went to sleep, I silently wished I would wake up feeling much better today. I even skipped using a pillow on my head to help my neck get better. But did it? NO

It was worse this morning, so much so that it took me about 5-10 minutes to get up. I almost had to ask DH to help me. My neck felt like it had been twisted badly and the pain had gone down to the shoulder blade area.

SO HOW DO YOU TREAT A STIFF NECK? I'm thinking maybe I should've asked the masseuse to leave it alone last night. Some people say it's self-healing, that aside from taking Ibuprofen to relieve the pain, you should just leave it alone. But being the OC freak that I sometimes am, I googled for some type of home remedy to maybe help alleviate the discomfort and found this:

To relieve a tight or stiff neck squeeze your shoulders up towards your ears and hold for 10 seconds then completely relax and release your shoulders. It's like an exaggerated shoulder shrug. Do this 10 times and you will feel much better.

I've been doing it since this afternoon and it did offer some temporary relief (I heard and felt a few pops here and there) but I'm almost in the same amount of discomfort as this morning and it's becoming awfully frustrating to deal with it. Even a simple task like carrying Sabine has become a difficulty.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Patty, my mom has this trick and thats to sleep without a pillow to relieve a stiff neck. And it has worked for me every time.

    Hope you feel better! Hassle ang stiff neck eh!

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  2. Too bad for you, Patty. Old folks would recommend to just leave it alone. I haven't had that severe a stiff neck though so not much help here. Hope it heals soon.

    As for the masseuse, her name is Raquel. =p

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  3. Thanks, girls. The "no pillow" trick didn't work for me sadly. I had it checked na and it turns out it's a pulled muscle on my upper back, left side. But the pain is on my entire neck. I need to look for a good PT haaayy!

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