Can cracking my own neck cause harm? This is a question I hear all too often in the practice. The answer is Yes, it can and here is why.
When dealing with this highly sensitive area, you really want a trained professional who can be very specific about what they are doing. While it is unlikely that something severe will go wrong now, the odds of compounding the problem are very high. Here are several reasons how that can happen:
- I am a Chiropractor and even I don’t have the ability to be specific enough on my own body to adjust the offending area by myself.
- By cracking your neck you are doing a generalised manipulation by twisting the head into whatever angle you need until you get a crack. You lose all specificity and simply crack the most mobile area.
- If we consider that the purpose of specific adjustments by a professional is to allow an area that is stuck to move freely again, by cracking your own neck you are creating more mobility in an area that is already moving well. Multiply this action by several times a day over several years and that area becomes easier and easier to click until eventually, instability has been created. The neck muscles, which were tight before now need to work even harder to compensate for this instability – creating more pain.
- Add to this the idea that by simply cracking the neck we are disregarding any problems elsewhere in the body, which may be contributing to our symptoms. That is to say: By clicking your own neck you are not fixing the problem, merely relieving symptoms and potentially making the problem worse.
With this in mind it is clear that, at best, by clicking your own neck you are treating a compensation pattern and not getting to the core problem and, at worst, you are doing more damage to the area and causing further compensation, which means more symptoms and more frequent need to crack the neck.
I’ve met people who crack their necks a hundred times a day and others who’s necks crack spontaneously when they turn their head, they still have no relief from their pain and still feel the need to crack, repeating the cycle and not getting to the root cause of the problem.
This explanation is usually followed by a question that sounds something like “But then why does it work?”
The exact mechanism is unclear but when we click a joint the capsule gets stretched and nerves are stimulated. This seems to provide some temporary relief of symptoms – giving a sensation of release/lightness. It’s not long after this though that the symptoms return, because remember we haven’t fixed the problem, and we feel the need to crack our neck again.
“So, if cracking the neck is so bad, why is it ok to be adjusted by a chiropractor?”
Let me preface my answer by saying that there is a difference between an adjustment and spinal manipulation, but that is a topic for another conversation. Before adjusting your spine, a Chiropractor should have taking a full health history and done some form of testing to determine that they are adjusting only the joint that needs adjusting. Our bodies are incredibly complex and our brain is incredibly intelligent and will often tighten up to compensate for an ‘injury’ elsewhere in the body that it can’t self-correct right now. This is a protective mechanism and removing this compensation will only result in the brain re-setting it or, even worse, creating some other, less efficient compensation pattern.
Our work as Chiropractors is to work with your body, not against it by detecting, analysing and correcting the things your body can’t self-correct through specific adjustments. These allow your body to let go of the compensation patterns, unwind and find more ease so you can go back to living your life more fully.
Here are 8 signs you may need to visit a Chiropractor.
What is Chiropractic? To find out, click here.
Peak Chiropractic Centre located in Claremont are family-friendly chiropractors focused on relieving aches, pains and posture correction. We offer in-house X-Ray facilities.
