When you have been traveling for the holidays and have been staying with friends and family away from home, you may find yourself with a literal pain in your neck. The changes in your sleeping accommodations as well as the many hours spent in the car or on an airplane traveling can take their toll on your physical health and well-being making your neck sore and potentially even causing more pervasive and extensive back pain. Instead of just gritting your teeth and suffering through it, get to know some of the ways that you can better deal with your pain in the neck so that you can get to feeling better as soon as possible.

Chiropractic Care

One of the best ways that you can directly care for your sore neck is to seek the help of an experienced chiropractor. Chiropractic care stems from the idea that improper alignment in the spine can cause all different types of discomfort, pain, and other health issues and ailments. This is because when the vertebrae of the spine are not aligned, the nerves that run along the spine can become pinched or blocked and are unable to transmit signals between the brain and body as they should.

Because the bones in your neck are a part of the spinal column, there is a high probability that your neck pain will be the result of a spinal misalignment. Your chiropractor will be able to assess your condition and then manually manipulate your spine back into position. These gentle manipulations will help to free up the blocked nerves and reduce your pain and discomfort.

Massage Therapy

Not all pain in your neck is caused by skeletal issues. Sometimes your neck pain is the result of the muscles in your neck and back. Tension due to stress, sleeping wrong, or traveling and sitting in uncomfortable positions for prolonged periods of time can manifest as knots in your muscles.

A session with a massage therapist can help you to get rid of those muscle knots. The massage therapist will manually palpitate your neck and back to find the areas that are not soft and supple in a relaxed position as they should be. This is where you are carrying abnormal tension.

Your massage therapist will then apply controlled pressure to those areas with their hands, or with stones or other massage tools to gently force the tension out of your muscles. This can almost immediately provide pain relief and overall stress relief and relaxation.

Now that you have a few ideas of how to properly deal with your post-holiday pain in the neck, you can get started taking care of yourself and ensuring that you are pain free as soon as possible.

Locations such as Vanderloo Chiropractic may be able to offer more guidance.