Neck Spasms: How can You Get Relief from It?

A spasm is a reflexive consolidation of muscle in your body. It may lead to severe neck pain quite frequently. This neck pain can last for minutes, but sometimes can even stay for hours, or days after the muscle moderates and the spasm abate.

Neck spasms can cause in any part of your body where there’s a muscle, so it includes your neck.

If you feel a neck spasm, you’ll experience an unexpected and excruciating pain in one or more areas of your neck, profound in the muscle tissue. The pretentious muscle might also feel tensed or tight and can become quite painful to the activity of your neck around. So, if you are looking for an escape route from this, you should visit a pain center for pain management in Singapore.

Neck spasms: Causes

There are several possible causes of neck spasms and you might come down with a neck spasm if you:

• Tensed neck due to improper exercise
• Lifting something heavier 
• Put a lot of weight on one of your shoulders while carrying a backpack
• Keep your neck in an unusual position for an elongated period, such as when keeping a phone in between your shoulder and ear or when sleeping in a bad posture

Other common causes of neck spasms are,

• Emotional stress
• Bad posture, like slouching or head leaning
• Dehydration that can lead to muscle cramps and spasms

Some of the least common but more significant causes of neck spasms are,

• Meningitis, a very critical infection that leads to inflammation in the brain and spinal cord
• Cervical spondylitis, a type of arthritis that can damage the spine
• Ankylosing spondylitis, an issue that leads to vertebrae in the spine to merge
• Spasmodic torticollis, which is also known as cervical dystonia that happens when neck muscles get stiffed involuntarily and make your head tilt to one side
• Whiplash
• Herniated disc

Home remedies

Before seeking effective neck pain treatment in Singapore, you can go through any of the following home remedies to get relief from neck spasms.

Over-the-counter pain relievers

To decrease neck pain from a neck spasm, it might be helpful help to use an over-the-counter (OTC) medication, such as

• Aspirin 
• Ibuprofen 
• Naproxen sodium
• Acetaminophen 

Most OTC pain relievers mitigate muscle stiffness by decreasing inflammation that can aggravate the pain of a neck spasm. 

Ice pack

Application of an ice pack or cold compress to stiff muscles in your neck might provide solace from pain, especially during the first few days after you encounter a neck spasm.

Remember not to put ice directly on the skin of the neck area, but wrap an ice pack or bag of ice in a thin soft towel. Apply the wrapped ice to the stiff neck area for around 10-15 minutes and reapply the wrapped ice as frequently as once an hour for the first 48 to 72 hours after experiencing a stiff neck.

Read Also: Shoulder Cracking: What Should You do About It?

Heat therapy

Heat therapy might also help relieve pain in your neck and you might find it comfortable to take a warm shower or wear warm clothes or use a warm water bottle or heating pad around your neck.

To avoid burns, always review the temperature before applying the heat therapy to your neck. If you’re applying a warm water bottle or heating pad, put a thin cloth in between it and your neck. One more thing – try not falling asleep with a heating pad on the neck area.

All You Need to Know About PRP (Platelet-rich plasma) Injections: Procedure, Cost, and Side Effects

PRP or Platelet-rich plasma is a healing substance that is injected into our body through needles. Plasma is a protein-contained blood component that helps your blood to clot. PRP is produced through isolating plasma from blood and then make a concentration. When PRP injection Singapore is given to someone, it heals the cells and generates new ones. This way the tissue grows at a much faster rate providing quick recovery. Though it is not approved as a legal treatment method in several countries, many giant sportspersons like Tiger Woods, Rafael Nadal, and many other athletes have used these injections to get quick recovery from injuries.

Can you inject PRP into your body?

Platelet-rich plasma injections can be used for several health issues, such as

Hair loss

Dermatologists inject PRP into the scalps to promote hair growth and prevent hair loss. A study conducted in 2014 says that Platelet-rich plasma injection is a very effective treatment for Androgenic Alopecia or commonly known as baldness.

Injuries

Doctors have been using these injections to treat both, tendon injuries and acute sports injuries. Sportspersons are given these injections for hamstring pulls or knee sprains etc.

PRP is injected in chronic tendon injuries as well, like tennis elbow, jumper’s knee or patellar tendon pain in the knee, etc. Tendons are very tough but thick tissues that work as a bridge between muscles to bone.   

After surgical treatments

After surgery doctors inject Platelet-rich plasma if a tendon tissue gets torn accidentally.

Osteoarthritis

People suffering from osteoarthritis have got more effective pain relief through Platelet-rich plasma injections than hyaluronic acid injections.

But, it is advised not to inject PRP without consulting a doctor as they are given according to the need or injury of every individual.

How Platelet-rich plasma injection is prepared?

PRP can be injected in various ways, 

• Sometimes numbing cream is used before the injection and for that, you have to arrive earlier for your treatment session.
• In other cases, local anesthesia is mixed with PRP or sometimes it’s applied during the surgical procedure too.

Complete procedure to inject PRP

• After visiting your pain specialist Singapore, he/she will decide the right PRP dosage for your issues.
• On the day of treatment, the blood sample will be drawn. The amount of the sample depends on the area of the injection. But, don’t worry as most of the time they will draw one tablespoon or less blood.
• Then in order to separate the blood components, it’s placed on the centrifuge that spins at a very high speed. 
• The process takes around 12-15 minutes and after that, the healthcare provider separates the plasma to create the injection.
• To find a specific tendon tissue, the doctors use ultrasound technologies most of the time.

Platelet-rich plasma injection cost

Before approaching Platelet-rich plasma injection, you must know that your health insurance will not cover this. So, the money you will spend on these injections will come out of your own pockets. The cost of PRP injections depends on the health condition of the individual, but for hair loss treatment, it might cost around S$ 1200- S$3500. On the other hand, the knee injection may cost around S$ 600- S$ 1500.

Side effects

As PRP injects certain substances in our body, you could suffer from some side effects. PRP injections are not allergic as it is an autologous treatment, where contents are drawn from your own body. However, some of the side effects of PRP injections are,

• Skin infection
• Nerve injuries
• Swelling and redness in the injection site
• Pain in the injection site
• Tissue mutilation

Why Should You Visit a Pain Management Specialist for Joint or Bone Pain? – Causes and Home Remedies of Back Pain

When you are feeling intense pain in your joints or bones very frequently, it’s not a healthy sign at all, but it’s indicating that something is wrong. In such cases, you should make an appointment to the best pain relief clinic and get diagnosed by the specialists. 

Why should you visit a pain management specialist?

There are several reasons why should you go only to the specialist if such kind of pain is annoying you frequently. But here in this article, we will talk about three major reasons, these are

•    General practitioners can manage some of your tricky muscle or joint pain, but a pain management specialist is particularly trained to deal with such problems at a much deeper level. With the new inventions and cutting edge technology, pain management specialists can cure your pain effectively.
•    The goal of pain management is not just to cure the area for a limited time, but treat the whole person. The procedures may include,
•    Psychological therapies
•    Meditation
•    Physical therapy
•    Lifestyle modification, like diet, yoga, and exercise
•    Acupuncture
•    Healing massage therapy
•    When it comes to bone or joint pain, a different approach is required for different individuals. Pain management is a personalized treatment method that will include both medicinal and non-medicinal ways to cure the pain form the roots.

 

Causes of back pain

At some point in time, everyone experiences back pain. In some cases, it might go away after 3-4 days, but in other cases, back pain might go away, but can come back after days, months and even years. If something is happening with you then you must visit a back pain doctor Singapore soon.

Strain

Due to incorrect weight lifting or heavy weight lifting at the gym or workplace, our muscles get strained. Muscle strain can also happen for other activities, such as feeling stiffness after sitting for a long time at work.

Structural problems

Back pain can cause if the interlocking discs gets misbalanced due to daily activities or any major or minor injuries. Herniated discs can be very painful and can cause massive pain while sleeping, tingling or even numbness.

Arthritis

If you have spinal osteoarthritis, it could lead you to severe back pain problems. If such conditions are left untreated, it could narrow the spinal column, which is called spinal stenosis.

Some other causes of back pain

•    Spondylolosthesis
•    Loss of nerve function
•    Fungal or bacterial infection at the spinal area
•    Cancer
•    Kidney stones or infections

Home remedies for back pain

You might get astonished that several home remedies are very effective to treat back pain problems, which are very cheap too. But, if even after trying all the home remedies, your back pain isn’t showing any sign of leaving, you have to visit a pain management clinic.

Heat and cold therapy

It is one of the most common home remedies that all of us used at least once in our life. If you have ever used heat and cold therapy, you know how effective it is. But, don’t apply the ice directly to your skin as it might damage your skin, rather use towels or soft clothes or the best way would be to use an ice bag.

Exercises

You must follow some light exercise, definitely not weight training or do as directed by your physiotherapist.

Essential oils

Essential oil that contains lavender is very helpful to heal the back pain problem.

Salt bath

A hot bath would be nice, but if you add some Epsom salt, your body will absorb the necessary minerals to treat muscle aches.