ARTICLES
Articles
The questions people actually ask about a painful neck, answered at length. Each one says what the evidence supports, what it does not, and where the honest uncertainty is.
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Posture, chairs and posture correctors
Measured properly, habitual posture predicts neck pain poorly. Duration, job control and variation predict it better, and only one of those needs a new chair.
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Do I need neck surgery?
Whether an operation could help is a different question from whether the structure causing your pain has been identified. The second one comes first.
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Is the numbness permanent?
Conduction block, axon loss and chronic denervation carry three different prognoses. Which one you have is most of the answer, and it is testable.
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Your injection did nothing. That is information.
A well-placed injection that changes nothing has told you where the pain is not coming from. That is a finding, and it is usually reported as a failure.
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What these procedures actually feel like
Awake and talking is deliberate, not cost-saving. What each needle procedure actually feels like, including the one designed to provoke pain.
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Does it matter which side your neck pain is on?
Facet joints are paired, so one-sided pain narrows the structure immediately. Both sides changes the question entirely, and side plus fingers gives you the level.
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Brief, sharp neck pain that passes in seconds
Pain that arrives fully formed and passes in seconds is a nerve firing, not a tissue reporting. Duration, trigger and travel separate the causes.
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You woke up and your neck will not turn
A locked neck on waking is guarding, not injury. It has a good prognosis, a short list of things that shorten it, and one presentation that is not what it appears to be.
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What not to do with a pinched nerve in your neck
Most cervical radiculopathy resolves on its own. What determines how fast is mostly a list of things not to do, starting with the collar.
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C5, C6, C7, C8: which fingers tell you which nerve
Each cervical root supplies defined fingers and defined muscles. Which two are numb narrows the level before imaging, and the level decides the treatment.
If reading has not settled it
These articles cover what is general. Which structure is generating your pain is a question that needs an examination.
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