As mums we face quite a few physical pains and challenges starting from pregnancy to the early years of motherhood. Mums with younger kids tend to have their hands full when they are at home, along with long working hours, meetings, work related travel etc as an executive at work. All of these can lead to neck pains or aggravate existing neck pains. Sometimes mums tend to learn to live with the pain but these neck pains can be managed better with some simple and easy solutions. In this blog we will discuss the common reasons for neck pain followed by these simple solutions to manage them better.
One of the commonest cause of neck pain is related to how we use our phones, which is very much a part of our everyday lives. How many times have you seen holding their phone at the level of their lap and bending their neck to look at their phone. This is such a common scene, sadly more with the younger generation. This posture with your neck bent down maybe the number one reason for your neck pain. So what can we do about it? The next time you look at your phone try and hold it up such that the top of the phone screen is at the level that is 5 to 10 degrees lower than your gaze. See the picture below to understand this better.
Bending your neck down by only 5 to 10 degree will help to put your neck (cervical spine) in a neutral position. It is a posture where the joints, muscles and ligaments of your neck are in a neutral zone which is their ‘happier’ position. The same principle applies when you are reading a book or looking at your computer screen. If you want to know more details about this posture and how it can affect you read the blog HERE.
Another common mistake that leads to neck pain is to sit for long hours without moving. Most of our everyday activities are in front of us, be it cooking, cleaning, typing, watching television or driving. This can lead to rounded shoulders and thus tightness across the front of the chest and stress on the mid-back and shoulder area. So try and move every 15 to 20 minutes when you are sitting in a static posture. This could be at your desk or while you are sitting in your car at a traffic light. It is advisable to do 2 to 3 repetition every hour but if you can try doing them 3 to 4 times a day.
The first exercise is to move your head from side to side as if saying no (similar to doing a shoulder check when you are driving). The second exercise is to tilt your head, bringing your ear to your shoulder. To be done on both sides. don’t best for you every three hours or probably twice a day or four times a day. Watch this video for more details (exercises are at 4:40 timestamp in the video) :
These movements help to destress your spine, preventing the tension from building up at the end of the day. If you want to learn easy desk based exercises that can be done under 3 minutes click HERE. These are specially good to prevent and manage neck and back pain, especially for those who sit for prolonged periods of time but do not have the time to squeeze in exercises or movement into their busy days.
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