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Neck cramps and neck pain often go together, affecting about 50% of adults per year, ranging in severity from trivial to crippling. Almost every scientific paper on the subject starts by reeling off the ugly statistics about how many people are afflicted by neck pain, what options are available for treatment of neck cramps, how many dollars it costs for the economy every year, and how medically mysterious and tricky it is. Lets see how to identify these and various treatments of neck cramps.
“Cramp” is an informal term. You won’t find it in a medical dictionary. But perhaps you should, because it’s a major sub-type of neck pain. A seemingly mechanical failure in the neck makes it feel like something in a joint is sticking or locking when you try to move it. Never underestimate the power of a neck cramp to make a person perfectly miserable. Not all pain is painful. It is possible to suffer deeply without hurting. Many neck cramp sufferers insist that the problem is not exactly painful, but still extremely unpleasant — a sensation of stuck-ness that is “irritating” or “uncomfortable” or “stuck” or more like a “deep itch” than actual pain.
Because a cramp often does not hurt, per se, it is often underestimated and neglected, even by the patient. The use of that word “cramp” can trivialize the problem. When it exceeds a certain degree of badness, no one calls it a “cramp” anymore — the word feels too lightweight.
Never underestimate the power of a neck cramp to make a person perfectly miserable. Not all pain is painful. It is possible to suffer deeply without hurting. A feeling of stuckness can be every bit as bad as severe pain. Cramps will nag and irritate to the point of nearly driving people out of their minds — a serious mental health hazard, no exaggeration. There have been cases when patients have shown signs of severe chronic psychological distress, unable to function fully because their neck will not stop harassing them.
Although it’s like comparing apples to orange cars, I have often had the impression that irritating cases are more tragic than painful cases, causing more emotional distress — suffering — and mental preoccupation than pure pain. There is something profoundly unsettling about this kind of discomfort. So cramps make neck pain particularly “interesting,” in the sense of the Chinese curse. They are a simple sensation that no one can really explain. Not every case of neck pain includes a cramp, but the terrible neck injuries and pain problems of today often become the persistent cramps of tomorrow. Pain and pestering stuckness are commonly inter-related and the lines between them altogether obscured. So this tutorial is about both, but with a strong emphasis on the exasperating phenomenon of a cramp.
