Dr. Dave Koivuranta warns against full backward neck circles, which can strain joints and affect blood vessels. Instead, try gentle stretches like pulling your ear toward your shoulder. Most neck pain isn't just muscular, so see a professional if it persists.
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Hey everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're all doing well and you're out there creating those great experiences in your life. You know, it was interesting the other day, someone came into the clinic and they had some upper back and neck pain, some occasional headaches, and they were describing what they do that helps, and one of the things that they did is what I don't want you to do. So if you have neck pain or if you don't, this is one action that I think people should avoid and for good reason, is back circles around. So you're saying that I do circles this way, circles this way, and then all the way around. And going all the way around to the back can create some problems mechanically with your joints, but there's also some concern perhaps with some of the blood vessels and maybe even with your brainstem. So you can definitely bend your neck straight back and stretch things out and then even do the circles to the front and to the sides, but I personally would advise people clinically to avoid going to the back. Now look, if you have neck soreness, neck tightness, you can definitely generally kind of stretch that out on your own. So ear to the shoulder, one hand you can sit on, um, or tuck it behind your back, and then standing tall, you pull one ear to the shoulder and just hold that until you feel that it's let go. For some people that might happen in 10 seconds. For some people that might happen in 45 seconds. But what you don't want to do, another don't, what I don't want you to do is pull too hard. We have this concept that more is better, or if it's stiff and sore you're going to really pull. And you know, a rope is designed to do a certain task and a rope will break at a certain point if there's too much tension. And then But with enough tension, it's just gonna do its job. Different ropes for different jobs. Well, your ropes, your muscles have different jobs, but they're not designed to resist a whole bunch of tension, but they are designed to stretch under the right tension. Too much tension, they try to protect. Not enough, or just enough tension, they'll relax and give and pull longer. So just go easy on the stretching is what I'm saying. I know that's a bit complicated, but you don't have to pull, just nurture what your body has to give, and it should never be painful. It should be a comfortable pull. Same thing the other way. And then you can change that angle. 45 degrees, you pull over and down. Other side. So still this arm sitting on behind your back, 45 degrees, pull. And just enough for you and not too much, just enough that you feel that you're nurturing or encouraging some pull. Now if you have neck pain, I can't advise you to necessarily do any of these things. So a lot of people, when they have enough discomfort or actual pain, you really wanna get that checked out because I'll tell you, in the majority of cases that we see in the clinic, neck pain, upper back pain, and headaches are not a muscular problem. There will be a muscular component and working on the muscles will help. Massage, acupuncture, doing some stretching, some strengthening exercises, it's all good, But when there's pain, there's usually an underlying mechanical or joint or even neurological problem that before you start moving it around and stretching it, or if you've done those things and it's not getting better, a really good idea to go get it checked by somebody and get an idea of why you're having that discomfort, that soreness, and especially that pain. And until someone is able to tell you why and point out what it is and then this is how you're gonna correct that, everything else might just be relief, temporary, short-term, silver bullet kind of stuff. All right? So no back circles. Don't do it. Don't push through hard pulling or trying to get it to relax. Nurture it. Just go easy and encourage it to relax. But bottom line is, if you're watching this and you're listening and you're thinking, "I'm going to try this on my own neck discomfort, soreness, and pain," if you haven't yet, please do go get it checked out because you may be delaying something that might be easier to fix now than it will be later. If you don't deal with it properly, especially if there's something deeper going on in there, alright? So do me a favor, go get checked. Keep having those great experiences in your life, and don't let neck pain and headaches get in the way.
