shoulder pain Archives - Manning Wellness

Is your bed your new office? The kitchen table your new conference table? A coffee table your new desk? If so, you are not alone! More than 41% of all working Americans are now working from home–and will continue to do so through 2021–and a majority are experiencing neck, back, and shoulder pain as a result. Continue reading to learn the top work from home pain relief tips from Dr. Jeff Manning, owner of Manning Wellness Clinic.

Don’t get us wrong, working from home definitely has advantages like comfortable clothing (the “athleisure” clothing industry is booming!), constant access to coffee, tea or snacks, time with pets, the ability to open a window….But those perks are coming with the downside of new aches and pains.

“We’ve been fortunate to consistently treat patients once stay-at-home orders were lifted, and we have definitely been seeing an increase in work-from-home pain: lower back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, and wrist and hand pain. When we talk with patients, the common thread is working from home, and not always under ideal conditions,” says chiropractor, Dr. Jeff Manning.

Dr. Jeff Manning, founder of Manning Wellness Clinic, a top-rated Chiropractic clinic in Dallas, Texas, offers the following tips to help combat work from home (and school from home) pain:

The Best Work from Home Pain Relief Tips from Manning Wellness Clinic

1. Support your low back to relieve work from home pain

You can purchase lots of low back support pillows online, but there’s a free option too: Simply roll up a bath towel or sweatshirt into a tube form. Place this horizontally in the small of your low back while you are sitting on a chair. You’ll need to sit straighter to keep the roll in place, which will keep you from slouching. Better posture means less lower back pain.

2. Pay attention to your work from home set-up

The middle of your computer screen should be at eye level. Use books to raise your computer to a height that works. Since many of us use laptops, that means you may need to get a wireless keyboard and mouse. The cost has come way down on these (many are available in the $20 range) but it’s so well worth the small investment to protect your spine. Also, try to keep the screen about an arm’s length away.
Pay attention to the height of your desk or work surface (kitchen counters included); check yourself and make sure that you’re not shrugging your shoulders to reach the keyboard. The key really is to be aware of what your body is doing.

3. Don’t forget to move!

Try to move at least once per hour. Set an alert on your phone (since we tend to go down the rabbit hole and spend hours sitting at the computer). Stand up, walk around, grab a snack, do a few jumping jacks…anything to move a little.

4. Do posture-specific exercises

Wall angels: Use a flat wall in your house. Stand with your heels against the wall–barefoot is best. Press your entire body gently against the wall. With arms by your side (the back of your hands and forearms should be facing and pressing against the wall; palms facing away) slowly raise your arms snow-angel style while keeping the backs of your forearms and hands grazing the wall. Raise so that your arms form a V from your shoulders, then lower to starting. If you can’t raise all the way up, go as far as you can while maintaining the correct form. It’s ok to have a small arch in your back, but don’t let your lower back get too far away from the wall. Raise and lower 10-15 times. Repeat 2-3 times per day.

Double Chin tucks: Slide your chin straight back toward your face. Your chin should not move down toward your chest and your head should not move up or down. The motion is as if you are making a “double chin.” Hold for three seconds and return your chin to a neutral position. Perform 7-15 repetitions. Aim to do this exercise 1-2 times a day.

Shoulder blade squeezes: While standing or sitting at your desk, squeeze your shoulder blades together gently without raising your shoulders. You should feel this in the mid to low shoulder blades. Hold the squeeze for 3-5 seconds and repeat 7-15 times. This can be done 1-2 times a day.

Get adjusted!

Regular chiropractic care, “maintenance care”, is also one of the best defenses to combat work from home pain. Even if you’ve never been to a chiropractor before, now is a perfect time to start. Give us a call at 214-720-2225 or click here to request an appointment.

There’s a reason why Dr. Jeff Manning of Manning Wellness Clinic is the go-to chiropractic health expert in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. As a knowledgeable professional with more than 15 years of clinical experience, Dr. Manning is known for his ability to talk honestly and openly to his patients; answer questions in a easy-to-understand style; and teach the benefits of chiropractic. Please read below where Dr. Manning talks about that pain in your shoulder that may really be a pain in the neck.

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SPECIAL FOCUS: BACK AND JOINT HEALTH

By DAPHNE HOWLAND

Special Contributor to the Dallas Morning News

Published: 04 November 2013 04:03 PM

For months, 52-year-old David Moen tried to relieve excruciating pain between his shoulder blades. Hot baths helped, but one day the bath and the heat went on too long, and he suffered heatstroke. That sent him to the doctor.“I suspected I had rotator cuff injuries. It was getting to the point where the pain was debilitating. It was putting me in a foul mood,” says Moen, who lives in Bedford. “I never thought it was a neck injury.”Neither did his doctor — at first. But as Moen’s case shows, the intricate working relationships among the tendons, muscles and nerves of the neck and shoulders mean that a pain in the neck could be a shoulder injury — and vice versa.Moen isn’t sure how he was hurt or even when the pain started exactly. It may have been a motorcycle accident in the mid-1990s, or just his tendency as a former Marine to work hard lifting heavy loads despite pain or strain. About two years ago, the pain started but bothered him only when he did heavy work. As time went on, the pain worsened and took longer and longer to subside.Complicating Moen’s diagnosis were his problems with carpal tunnel syndrome. When he grabbed his motorcycle handlebars, his hands went numb. He’s worked at Bell Helicopter in Hurst for 27 years, sitting at a table that was never meant to be used as a desk.A doctor suspected the carpal tunnel issues could be causing his upper back and shoulder pain, but an MRI revealed a severe neck injury. Surgery to his C5 and C6 neck vertebrae have finally alleviated the pain in his shoulders.“We call the shoulder ‘the great pretender’ because it has a complicated structure of nerves and tendons,” says Dr. Carla L. Young, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital. “It’s important to tease out the cause because the treatments are different.”

Common complaint

Pain in the neck and shoulder is extremely common because their complex workings are vulnerable to age-related changes, poor posture, lack of exercise and stress.

Degenerative disk disease, an ominous term, happens to everyone starting about age 20. Disks, which cushion the vertebrae, aren’t able to hold as much water, which makes them more delicate, Young says. Meanwhile, tendons in the shoulder’s rotator cuff start changing about age 40.

As those parts lose resilience, stressors like underuse or overuse of muscles and tendons and even emotional stress can cause strain or injury.

Posture is the problem for most people, says Jeffrey Manning, a chiropractor who owns the Manning Wellness Clinic in Dallas. “People look down at their computer, their phones. So the muscles in the front of the neck will start to become shortened and less flexible, and across the shoulder blades they’ll become stretched, but not in a good way. It’s like trees leaning into the wind.”

This begins a cycle that can change joints and bones as they react naturally to the physical demand. “Good stress, like healthy exercise, strengthens bones. But if you stress bones in an imbalanced way, they react in an imbalanced way, and that messes up the mechanical balance of the working joint,” Manning says.

The stress of busy, complicated lives or the emotional toll of bad days or sad life events are often manifested in stiff muscles in the neck and shoulders. Stress hormones worsen the problem, Young says.

“Your muscles get knotted up by very real physical tenseness,” Young says. “But the stress is twofold: Your stress does tend to be carried in the form of shortened muscles in the neck but it also changes the biochemical markers in the body. The same chemicals that are released when you are in stress or in pain are fuel for the pain of muscle tension.”

When to see a doctor

Moen says he wishes he’d gone to a doctor after six months of suffering rather than two years. But Young says to go after more like six weeks.

For one thing, she says, studies show that chronic pain can rewire the brain so that discomfort continues even after the cause is resolved. Plus, many issues can be addressed with conservative measures such as physical therapy, ergonomic changes to the workplace, exercises, modified activity and medication — as long as the problem is accurately diagnosed and caught early.

For stiffness without pain, seeing a doctor may not be necessary. But it’s probably a signal to make changes, these experts say: Be sure you work at a computer with your neck in a neutral position. Exercise regularly; the blood flow helps keep muscles and tendons healthy. Don’t constantly look down at your phone; look up and enjoy the scenery.

“It may start out as a posture issue. Then after six months or a year it becomes a matter of the joints just not working properly anymore,” Manning says. “Your body is such an intricate machine.”

Schedule your FREE phone consultation with Dr. Manning

214.720.2225

Work from Home Pain Relief Tips