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Stiff Neck Physiotherapy

Waking up with a stiff neck is actually very common. This very uncomfortable condition is caused by a variety of neck issues and conditions and we treat them all the time. Stiff neck is also known as "wry neck" or "acute torticollis".

Stiff neck is often related to soft tissue injuries, sprains or strains, and can also be a symptom of underlying disorder in our cervical spine (neck). In some patients, slipped/herniated spinal disc or cervical spondylosis may also cause a stiff neck.

Neck physiotherapy will definitely help to treat your stiff neck or any neck pains.

Stiff Neck Symptoms

Symptoms of neck stiffness and/or neck pain can be a related or caused by other problems, such as a

  • slipped disc (medically termed as disc prolapse)
  • vertebral (spine bone) facet joint
  • soon-to-be-diagnosed fractured spine bone (undiagnosed cervical fracture/broken neck)

So what happens with any types of injuries will often lead to internal-protection called muscle "bracing, guarding and spasms" which causes an automatic stiffening/stiff neck. It is a natural and protective defensive mechanism to protect your neck from any further damage.

In common cases of stiff necks and wry necks, patients often report that they "woke up with a painful and stiff neck", and sometimes they described it as their neck or neck joints got "locked or stuck", where they find that their neck and heads are locked in just one side and it's just too painful to move.

Sometimes, this pain may travel up the neck or travel down to the shoulder area causing painful spasms in the neck muscles too.

Stiff Neck Physiotherapy Treatments

Stiff neck and wry neck can be effectively managed and treated by one of our skilled senior specialist spine physios - these are painful conditions we commonly treat in our physio clinic. What they will do is they will first perform an indepth assessment of your neck to understand and determine the main cause of your neck pain.

After that, once they had determined and diagnosed the cause of the pains, they will prescribe or provide treatments that may include gentle and firm

Our senior spinal physios will first loosen and induce relaxation to your neck muscles and joints by providing heat therapy and gentle gradual soft tissue management to the soft tissue and joints in your neck to slowly and gradually glide and loosen your neck joints and increase your cervical joint range of motion.

They may prescribe patients with stiff neck in our computerized decompression neck traction bed which provides a very graded and gentle stretch to your back and neck joints over a period of time, and this works very well with with spinal muscle pains and spasms.