As you were comfortably snuggled in your bed, sleeping, after a long hard tiresome day, dreaming of an alternate world, something painful was about to happen to your body. Even though we can defy the laws of physics in our sleep, we cannot escape the real world and the consequences of sleeping wrong.
Sleeping wrong? I thought we just lay there and close our eyes, but it is much more than that. Who hasn’t slept in a strange bed and woke with soreness. Or, how about going camping, to find that your sleeping area is really just a sloped mountain side that is filled with rocks. Funny how we can be a little sore after sleeping on the ground, but when waking from our tripple density nasa foam mattress, with custom inflation, we can barely move our neck or back.
This has happened to me once, my neck was so stiff, I might as well had a neck brace on. The pain was horrendous, and the limitation of my movement made me disabled. It is a horrible feeling, to be fine one day, and unexplainably incapacitated the next day. I survived, and that was with out seeing a doctor, but if I knew then what I know now, I would have seen a chiropractor or another doctor in my area. As a chiropractor in Denver, I regularly see patients with the exact same presentation.
They usually have no explainable cause as to why their neck or low back is so stiff, and painful. They wake to find their neck or back completely different, painful, and with almost no normal motion. Plenty of conditions can mimic this situation, so it is wise to consult a doctor.
This lack of movement, and severe pain that develops overnight is most likely attributable to the derangement of the soft tissues that surround the joint, i.e. the joint capsule. Each joint in your body has a capsule that surrounds it holding the precious synovial fluid, akin to the oil in your car. Also in the joint, we have special folds of the capsule called Menscoids. It is the meniscoids in this situation that are not working correctly. They are little flaps of the capsule that can sometimes be misaligned and function incorrectly. It is like putting dirt in ball bearings. These meniscoids also have the ability to transmit pain, which they do very well.
The pain from the meniscoid triggers a spasm in the nearby muscles, which will leads to fatigue and a cycle of ischemia, inflammation, and more pain. While the spasms and inflammation can be targeted with pharmaceutical therapy, the drugs still do not address the underlying problem. The underlying problem of a joint that is locked up due to incorrectly working joint mechanics. So, no matter how many drugs you take, the alignment will not fix itself.
Every type of doctor has a niche, and the condition of the trapped meniscoid, is well suited to the Chiropractor. We perform approximately 95% of all the adjustments that occur in the United States. No other profession that dabbles in spinal manipulation gets as much training as a chiropractor. So, if you have never seen a chiropractor before, and have such a condition, I implore you to see your local chiropractor.
To Your Health,
Dr. Trent Artichoker MS, DC