I hurt my neck. Now What
Do I need the Emergency Room?!
You woke up this morning and can’t turn your neck? We’ve all been there, and getting out of bed safely is one of the events in the Over 40 Decathlon.
If you are a paid subscriber this is a non issue since our neck rehab protocol is included with your subscription. Grab it here and get started:
Before we proceed, our attorneys tell me I have to include this part even though statistically neck pain rarely requires an Emergency Room (ER) visit.
3 Reasons You Should Go to the ER
You are experiencing neck pain PLUS the following
Trauma
Weakness, clumsiness, or altered sensation
Flu-like symptoms and light sensitivity
Let’s look at each in more detail. If you pinky promise not to hold me liable you can skip this part.
#1 Neck pain from Trauma
This would be something like a car accident or head trauma. The trauma could have caused a fracture of something boney or ruptured a ligament that secures the skull to the spine.
#2 Weakness, clumsiness, or altered sensation
Spinal cord compression is the concern here. The weakness and clumsiness could be either arms or legs. Some examples would be:
Trouble with buttons
Dropping things
Unsteady walking
Altered sensation would be like a pins and needles feeling or complete numbness. Neck pain DOES NOT have to be present to need the ER.
#3 Flu-Like Symptoms and neck pain
Fever
Nausea
Vomiting
The concern here is meningitis, which is a stiff neck plus those flu-like symptoms. All kinds of bad things associated with this so go to the ER.
Why doesn’t the ER care about me
This was discussed regarding back pain, read about that here:
In a nutshell the ER only cares about life threatening conditions. Neck pain without the above IS NOT life threatening.
They may give you pain medications, but the meds would be hit or miss for your neck pain unless they broke out the hard stuff.
Obviously it’s your neck and life, so go if want. Try not to be mad if/when they send you home without any resolution of your problem.
Alright, so what’s actually wrong with me?
Now that we know you don’t need the ER, let’s diagnosis your problem, then we can fix it.
There’s 4 General Neck Pain “diagnoses.” Let’s see which one you have:
Neck pain with mobility deficits - you neck is stiff, and range of motion is likely limited (most common)
Neck pain with coordination impairments - your neck hurts because of trauma (think whiplash). ROM is fine, just hurts (maybe alot)
Neck pain with headaches (NOT migraines) - like #1 PLUS you get headaches
Neck pain with radiating pain - pain that radiates into the shoulder or hand, with associated weakness and numbness and tingling (radiculopathy). You may ALSO have #1.
Strangely enough, the basic treatments for each of these are nearly identical. The only differences will be YOUR tolerance since how much pain you are in is the biggest difference.
Simple treatments that focus on neck range of motion and endurance are all you need. Of course we like ours so I’ll link it below:
The caveat to needing MORE than this is if you are in a combat sport (football, martial arts), then you’d need to upgrade your neck training.
You’d simply just add resistance. Reach out to us if you need help with this.
Brand new pain? Feels like your neck is locked up?
Here’s a program you can use over the next 5 or so days, then transition to our Neck Rehab Program after that.
Your pain is unique so you may easily make it through the 5 days, or it will take you 2 weeks. Use your pain as your guide and don’t let it EXCEED 4/10 during the exercises.
Grab the program below.