Well, the past month hasn’t been good. The tightness in my neck and shoulders is actually worse than they were a month ago when I outlined my plan in the post Overview of the Ideas to Fix My Neck and Shoulders. A quick recap.

1. Slow Daily Rowing – I had to stop this as it made my back mid-back sore and caused muscle spasms. When I reduced the frequency those problems went away, but it didn’t help with tightness. Also I didn’t really enjoy it.
2. MSM – I supplemented with 1000-2000 mg of MSM daily. I’l continue to use the bottle until empty, but I don’t see it helping.
3. Mobility exercises – I still do these, but I don’t them helping.
4. Some isometric neck exercises – See this page. I just started this, so I’ll continue slowly with it. Nothing so far.
5. Lying on the floor breaks – Actually I love this idea I got from Txomin and Stephan. It is very calming and I’ve found increased energy and effectiveness when returning to work. However, it hasn’t helped my neck or shoulders yet.

I just thought of another theory on why my neck, shoulders and recently back are feeling more achy. When I went from 210 pounds to 190 pounds, a lot of my stiffness went away. I was chalking it up to eating a lower inflammatory diet, but it might just be a weight thing. So when I increased my weight recently, it might have increased the stiffness. Dropping 10 pounds should tell me if that is the culprit.

My focus for the next month will be on losing some weight, more lying breaks and breathing exercises. I’ll do one isometric neck exercises session a week.

I’m sorry this post has taken so long. When I asked for ideas to Help me Fix My Neck and Shoulders, I got way more feedback than I ever expected. To say I was overwhelmed would be understatement. I actually got more ideas than I could ever implement. The more I started exploring these ideas and their criticisms, the more confused I got. Below is a list of the ideas I received from the comments broken down into groups.

Before I list out the ideas, I think I may have asked the wrong the question. It isn’t just about fixing the problem, but identifying what causes it and what could have prevented it. I still don’t know why my neck and shoulders are tight. I can assume it is because I work at a desk, but others that work at a desk don’t experience the same level of tightness. The correct way to solve this problem is to isolate cause first, which is something I haven’t figured out. To date, I have just dived head first into finding the cure and it has gotten me no where.

Mobility

1. Mobility Exercises (such as the 3 Minutes routine)
2. Perform ball massage. (Mobility WOD)
3. Yoga

Although I feel good when I do mobility work, it hasn’t done anything to relieve tightness. I experimented with some exercises on the Mobility WOD website and although I could feel what he was talking about, they did nothing for the tightness. By the way, does anyone else get dizzy watching his videos? He needs a tripod badly.

Mind

1. Mind Body 

Could the back pain I cured via Dr. Sarno have moved north to my neck and shoulders? Did I trade pain for stiffness? Is this mind body? Beats me. My hunch is that it isn’t, but I’m not sure.

Lifestyle, Gadgets

1. Use no pillow.
2. Sleep on the floor.
3. Type of chair, chair settings
4. Theracane
5. Yoga needles on a rubber pad

I have not tried #1 or #2 yet. As for #3, I do need to reupholster my computer chair, but I have no clue how to do it. Maybe I’ll just buy a new chair. Seems wasteful though. I liked the Theracane, but found it too addicting and it didn’t have any long term benefits. I also went to a store and tried all the different Yoga needle mats and pillows. Couldn’t feel anything, so I didn’t buy one.

Photo by Lori Greig

Dietary

1. Foods that are inflammatory. 
2. Caffeine?

I have yet to find a food that triggers inflammation. Doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist, just means I haven’t found it. I could start by doing a nightshade elimination diet, which many people with pain have found helpful.

The book Trigger Point Therapy for Headaches and Migraines: Your Self -Treatment Workbook for Pain Relief by Valerie DeLaune said this about caffeine:

Caffeine causes a persistent contracture of muscle fibers (sometimes referred to as “caffeine rigor”) and increases muscle tension and trigger point irritability…

Other than that book and some PubMed references to frogs, I couldn’t additional information about “caffeine rigor”. Is it real? I will be doing a longer caffeine detox later this year, so in a way I will be testing this idea out. However, I have no clue how long one needs to be off caffeine to rid themselves of “caffeine rigor”, assuming it even exists.

Strength

1. Nautilus based neck strengthening exercises
2. Shrugs
3. Home neck exercises?

This was actually the most interesting idea in the comment thread. Instead of avoiding load bearing exercises, one would use them to make the region stronger. So far the only neck exercises I’ve been aware are more static stretches, which I do regularly, but haven’t helped. I’m going to start some light isometric neck exercises.

Professionals

1. Trigger Point Therapy
2. Rolfing
3. CranioSacral Therapy
4. Massage
5. Chiropractor
6. Active Release Therapy
7. Nautilus Strength
8. Feldenkrais Method
9. Alexander Technique

As I’ve stated many times on this blog, my track record with health professionals has been abysmal. They bleed my money and I feel better in the short run, but they never fix anything. I’ve been addicted to the endorphin release of both massage and chiropractic services. It is expensive and frustrating. This is why I want to take a DIY approach to solving this riddle. If I have to go to a health professional, it is because they are teaching me something that I can’t learn on my own. With that said, I will be taking a class on the Feldenkrais Method, because I found the library books on the topic to be bewildering.

Since December

Since my Help Me post, I have continued doing neck mobility and the 3 Minutes routine. I have also experimented with the ball massage, foam rollers and spent a few weeks attempting to do Trigger Point Therapy. None of has helped. In fact, I think the Trigger Point work made things worse, which I covered in the post Kefir, Caffeine and Trigger point Therapy. I have also resumed doing shoulder presses at the gym. I falsely associated that movement with tight shoulders. It appears to be innocent.

My plan now is to learn about Feldenkrais, continue the 3 Minutes routine, do some isometric neck exercises and fix my chair. Then I’ll attempt to take a nap on the floor at first – with and without a pillow. That should be a good start. I’ll also prepare a nightshade elimination test along with exploring a low inflammation diet, although I don’t think that is the cause. The “caffeine rigor” thing is puzzling to me as are the roots of the tightness.

Most of the health posts on this site are me sharing what I’ve learned. For this post, I am openly asking for your help. For several years, I have had tight neck and shoulder muscles. Although I rarely would say that I am in pain, it has been an annoyance. All my other health markers have improved, including headaches, except this. I have done the conventional advice and it has not helped.

Photo by Roland

More Detail

The back of my neck and shoulders are often very tight. I have done all the more popular neck exercises. See the chart on this page. When I do these exercises on a consistent basis, my range of motion increases, however they have done nothing to reduce the tightness. When doing the Trapezius Stretch (exercise #1) on the chart, I can lower my ear all the way to my shoulder on both sides. I have excellent mobility, but it is still tight.

When I move my neck quickly, I get a minor jolt of pain. As a result, I tend to turn to look more with my upper torso than my neck. Even though I am a champ when it comes to parallel parking, I can really feel the restricted movement in my neck when I park. I also get a minor jolt of pain if I jump down. On the rare times I do sprint, I have to keep my form perfect and my neck fixed.

The tightness used to be more pronounced on my right side, which is my dominant hand. Since switching to a vertical mouse, the tightness is more centrally located with only a slight bias toward the right.

Deep tissue massage feels wonderful and helps a lot, but it is costly, so I rarely get a massage. A few months ago my neck was in such awful shape that I had an hour massage where the massage giver was only able to work out about half the tension. Normally I would suspect they were trying to up sell more sessions, but I knew they were right. Ideally, I’d like to have a neck and shoulders that didn’t require regular professional maintenence.

As much as I love and have benefited the exercises in 3 Minutes to a Pain-Free Life, I have gotten no relief from their neck exercises. I also have stopped doing shoulder lifts in the gym, as I have found they make me even tighter.

I do the Sky Reach stretch from 3 Minutes to a Pain-Free Life daily. I feels good and I do now have full range motion, but my shoulders still feel tight. 

When I chased down the root cause of my back pain, I discovered it was psychological. Although there could be a stress root, this seems totally different. The back pain was not subtle. It was intense and quite distracting. It spiked during periods of stress and disappeared during periods of low stress. The neck and shoulder tightness almost never surfaces as pain and those times when has been painful, the pain level was very low compared to prior back pain. The neck and shoulder tightness rarely demands my attention, which makes me skeptical it has stress roots. That analysis is based off what I’ve read by Dr. Sarno and others that are experts in the field. Also the neck and shoulder tightness pre-dates my back pain and exists today post back pain.

Other tidbits:

• My posture is much better than it used to be, which has helped a little.
• I drive a lot less than I used to, which helped my back, but not my neck and shoulders.
• Although I am at a desk a lot, the time I spend sitting varies.
• I have been supplementing with various forms of Magnesium daily for years. No help.
• Both heat and ice feel good, but I haven’t detected a pattern where they actually fix the problem.
• I have changed pillows numerous times. From normal to thin to a rolled-up towel. No one pillow is the cause or cure.
• Years ago I tried chiropractic sessions. I believe that charlatan made my neck worse.

Any ideas? If you’ve read this far and think you have an idea on how I can reduce my neck and shoulder tightness, please leave me a comment. Thank you.