Do you suffer from episodic neck pain that comes and goes? Many people endure these types of neck pain flare-ups for years at a time. What causes them and how do you find lasting relief?
Recurring pain in the neck is a warning sign that chronic pain might be a future inevitability. Statistics clearly point to episodic pain being a common precursor of chronic symptomology, so it is vital to heed the danger and do everything possible to stop flare-ups before they become a daily discomfort.
This post explores episodic pain in the cervical spinal region.
Episodic Neck Pain Defined
Recurring neck pain is defined as flare-ups of symptomatic activity that eventually resolve and get completely better or nearly better before the next episode occurs. Episodes of pain might occur only days apart or may occur months or even years apart, given the specific circumstances of each patient’s profile.
Chronic neck pain has become an epidemic issue in the modern healthcare industry. Chronic pain has also received tremendous funding when it comes to research. It is well known that episodic pain leads to chronic pain in more cases than not. What this means is that if you have recurring pain for an extended timeframe, statistically, you are likely to develop chronic pain that might never go away. No one wants to endure this cruel fate…
Why do flare-ups of pain tend to encourage the development of chronic symptoms and what can be done to stop the process from progressing.
Recurrent Neck Pain Causes
There are many potential causes of episodic pain in the neck including all of the following explanations:
Some injuries can be exacerbated by activity, positioning or other factors, especially during the healing phase. Full healing for a serious neck injury might take a few years, so recurring pain may plague the patient during this time.
Some degenerative conditions might cause recurring pain when something causes them to intensify and flare up. These conditions may range from bone to disc to soft tissue concerns and sometimes involve all three types of tissue.
The most common cause of recurring neck pain is certainly ischemia. This is one of the most common of all pain syndromes, but is also the least often diagnosed. In most instances, pain is blamed on some structural neck pain scapegoat, when the actual origin of pain is an oxygen deprivation syndrome. Doctors are poorly trained to diagnose this condition and the evidence needed to diagnosis it is much more difficult to confirm, as opposed to placing blame on a structural abnormality that can be discovered in moments using diagnostic imaging.
Episodic Neck Pain Help
There is always a reason why neck pain flares-up over and over again. It is of paramount importance to discover and resolve that underlying reason if you hope to both find relief now, as well as prevent chronic pain from being your reality later.
A minority of patients might have to accept some degree of symptomatic flare-up due to previous injury or current degeneration. Others may have to accept some degree of occasional pain due to congenital or developed structural abnormalities. These cases only comprise a small number of the total patient population who suffer from episodic [pain, however.
Most patients who suffer seemingly idiopathic neck pain flare-ups will develop chronic pain, since they are suffering from an ongoing and most often escalating mindbody syndrome driving ischemia regionally. This explains many of the mysterious aspects of their symptoms, such as the variability in location, expression and severity often seen. It also explains why previous treatment targeting structural scapegoats has failed, often miserably! Considering this as a valid theory for suffering has literally saved countless patients in the chronic pain sector. Wouldn’t it be better to come to the realization that this may also be your reality before chronic pain begins a struggle for control of your very life?
