Posted by How To Take Care Of Your Eyes , Neck And Head
Today we are going to talk about having a smarter neck for better vision.One of the really interesting things about the Health system is that we talk a lot about the eyes and how to improve the eyes.
There are multitudes of drills that we use and assessments, but one of the things that often bypasses people is the perfect mind and body connection, the contraction and relaxation of the body that influences the mind.
Imagine a bodybuilder who is working out he will not get the right pump without the mind and body connection and if he has that strength he will get the desired pump in no time, This comes with practice and experience.
Why this is really important is that your upper neck, your upper cervical spine is really well known to cause visual problems after injury.
If you look at the research literature around whiplash accidents, concussions, head trauma,and other neck injuries, it's really common for people to complain about headaches, TMJor jaw pain, a wide variety of other issues.
One thing that often comes up is visual disturbances.
Traditionally you may go to your eye doctor, you may see a Z trainer and maybe He looks at you and does some vision drills and potentially that helps.
If something is not working what would be the potential answer rather than just banging our head against the same wall over and over.
By the way, I'm wearing a hat not because I didn't wash my hair, I don't have any left,this is actually part of the drill we're going to do so that's why the hat is on.
What I want you to do today is going to actually focus on some very specific neck work inclusive of the tongue position that we talked about in the last blog.
What I would love for you to do is use either a Snellen chart or a Multi Size Font Chartas your pre-assess and reassess tool.
This kind of freaks people out in the beginning, what we're going to do is we're going to test your eyes, we're going to do some neck exercises and then re-test your eyes to see if they got better.This really surprises people that this can happen but it happens over and again.In fact, in a working environment they may had about 80 trainers, advanced trainers,people that have been doing a lot of work and even within that group they had roughly 60% that saw improvements in visual acuity from doing some of the neck and tongue exercise st hat we are going to be talking about.
I want you to make sure for this one, rather than just seeing how your neck feels, test your eyes.Snellen chart and Multi Size Font Chart, those are in previous blogs if you don't have them you can download them.
Here's what we're really interested in.If you reach up and find the back of your skull, the base of your skull, there's a group of muscles sitting just underneath there that lots of people love to have some pressure put in.
That's called your suboccipital muscles.This particular area of your cervical spine is incredibly important because it has an extremely high density of what are called mechanoreceptors.
These are small nerve endings that tell you where you are in space.Why that is so vital is that the back of your neck and skull have to be communicating very closely with the rest of your brain in order to keep your eyes level with the horizon and make some other great stuff happen for you.
what we often find is people with prior neck injuries or head injuries very often have disturbed vision.
When we work on strengthening and mobilizing the upper cervical spine a lot of times their vision will also improve.What I want to do is take you through a series of very simple exercises.
It's extremely important that you keep the tension low to begin with because these are very touchy, a little sensitive, it may be a little sore.I don't want you to overdo anything.
Keep it three out of ten, whatever we're doing.Whether were stretching it or whether we are doing some contraction work.
The basics that we are going to begin with are, first of all, before we do any neck exercises,we want to think back to the blog last week, get our tongue in the correct position.
Cheesy Grin
Were going to start off with what's called the cheesy grin.Get a little swallow try to hold your tongue exact opposite to the front teeth back and touching the roof of your mouth with the rest of the tongue try to hold in that position and breathe through your nose
we are going to start
with a stretch, or a mobilization of the upper cervical spine and the
way that I'll demonstrate by using a hat.
Imagine that you have a hat on and I want you to think about taking the very front of the brim and touching it to your chest.
As you think about getting it to your chest I want you to think about bringing it higher up on your chest.What that will do is, you think about the brim rolling around, it will give you a very significant stretch feeling in the base of your skull.
You go into that position, again keeping it light,three out of ten, focus on the brim of the hat.
Strengthening Exercise
From here we want to do a little strengthening exercise.Were going to come up in that same area where we were feeling the stretch, we are now going to extend, we are going to take the brim of the hat straight up to the ceiling and we're going to contract.
Once you've got a good contraction, use your hands, reach the back of your skull and pull up toward the ceiling so you get a little isometric contraction and then gently relax.
If you go too hard you'll know because it's going to feel quite uncomfortable when you relax out of it so again, keep the tension low.
You should have felt a really significant stretch across the back of the skull and then a really nice contraction.
On looking from the backward direction the What you see is, if we find the base of the skull, the muscles directly underneath that are where we're going to be targeting for these exercises.
To see kind of the first motion from behind, we are going to take the brim of the hat, roll it forward.Again, trying to bring it higher on the chest so we'll get a nice stretch through here.
Once we feel like We've opened it enough then we'll come up and go into extension, getting good contraction through here.
Use your hands in this position to create some isometric tension for six seconds.Then gently return to standing.Now that we've done that we want to go to each side so we're going to do this on a diagonal.
We start to work on basically the back left side of the head.To do that we have to turn the head slightly to the right, repeat the same exercise.
Think about the brim and now we begin bringing it to the chest, rolling it forward, that's creating this nice stretch, hold for a few seconds and then we are going to reverse that.
We are going to come up, again pointing the brim up, nice little contraction and then give yourself a little resistance for a count of six, Then relax.
Then we will repeat that to the opposite side.Here, once again the brim of the hat is going down, focus on moving that toward the chest.Then opposite direction, find that nice little contraction just at the top of the neck, push into it, six,seconds and gently relax.
Do this between one and maybe three repetitions of that and no more.
There are a couple of
important things,
If you get dizzy at all doing this, stop
If you had any history of maybe,
If you have a prior history of what's called TIAs or
If you've ever had a stroke, ever had any significant surgeries or injuries in your upper neck I would recommend that you ask your doctor about this before you do this exercise.
It's generally very safe but one of the things that we are a little bit concerned about is getting into this extended position rotation.
Just go cautiously, if you have any concerns about this consult your healthcare provider.
Otherwise, once you've done your two, I said one to three repetitions, grab your chart and re-test your eyes.
Most of the time what well see, like I said in 60 to 70% of the people that we work with,if they've had some kind of injury that makes us think about this a small amount of work,improving the proprioceptive input while holding the correct tongue position should have some positive impact on your visual acuity.
If you come slightly above the neck you have the major functioning organ in your entire body or we can say it controls each and every moment of the body and that is also sometimes controlled by some forein particles and that is a headache.
In these busy times the brain is at its extreme in all the times and sometimes we overload it and that is the main cause headaches
Headaches are caused by tension and sometimes over stress Your boss is yelling at you or your girlfriend teasing at you . What will you do if you have a headache in the middle of a journey in the middle of your work? Let me show you 6 easy treatments for a headache relief, Any kind of headache.
1.Cervicogenic Headache
Cervicogenic headaches are really based upon upper cervical issues of the segment the ligaments or the muscles and these are actually about 20% of peoples headaches. and a lot of times it is one-sided.
You'll feel the pain coming up around. Sometimes it's kind of around the temple area, but it usually comes from the neck all the way up, sometimes kind of back behind your eye and a lot of times these are misdiagnosed as migraine headaches.but its really a mechanical dysfunction versus migraines which usually likes chemical dysfunction.
2.Chin Tuck
chin tucks are the favorite. if you've heard about headache, chin tucks are really great for your neck, shoulders, everything up from the chest because its resetting those muscles.
and a lot of times headaches come from let's say we're working on the computer or we're playing a game, we're even watching a movie, and we get closer and we get closer like that, and then we end up straining all of the muscles in our neck area.
Chin tuck is simple to do, and it's really effective. it's not tucking your chin down, but you're tucking your chin back. you want to keep your chin in a neutral position here, so not down tucking in, up tucking in, but right there, and then you're just taking that chin and tucking it in where you're getting lots of little chins down there.
Once you get in position, you want to hold it for about three to five seconds,and then relax. and a lot of times you'll notice that you might have started here and then you do the chin tuck and once you relax you have a big space in between because it's resetting those muscles.
It's a really nice way to get started, warm it up, stretch it out, and exercise those muscles a little bit. so holding it for three to five seconds,just do about five of them.
But you can do this several times throughout the day because it's just a really nice way to get everything going. Another great way to do a chin tuck is lying down or leaning against the wall.
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You're actually then pushing into something while you're doing the chintuck. you can roll up a towel if you want to if you have something like a pool noodle or a smaller foam roll.
You can just put it in the space of your neck , check and see if the pool noodle is enough, but basically, you just want to put it in the curve right there,and then you're still doing that chin tuck. so this one isn't quite enough, if you have a skinny neck then use a little bit bigger foam roll.
Just putting it and you're still doing that chin tuck where you're pushing that chin in, but now you have something that you're pushing into.
You're just going to hold that for about three to five seconds and then relax. It is an isometric exercise now, it's really easy todo against the wall too, so if you're where were you cant lie down on the floor, you don't have something to push into you can do it just on the floor if you want to and you're pushing in, pushing down towards the floor,holding it for three to five seconds.
But again pretty easy to do against the wall as well, but while you're doing it make sure you're keeping that chin in that neutral position.
You're not tucking it down and if you're just tucking it in so that's a great way of getting everything loosened up and going.
3.Foam Foller
foam roller, we're trying to get that upper cervical area like the c2 vertebrae, c3 vertebrae, up there.
This sometimes is really hard to get to yourself. You get it mobilizing or moving a little bit, so again using a foam roll is a really nice way to get that spot without having to hold it or anything like that.
When these segments are stuck together or tight, that can cause a headache, so if you get more mobility in there that loosens everything.
Coming back down onto the foam roll and so now what we want to do is we want to put that foam roll up really close to where our skull comes to our neck, and that's where that c2 vertebra is.
Just place it there we would like to hold on to the foam roll and just gently rotate the head side to side.You can do a continuous motion like this, or you can do where you're turning your head a little bit holding it for three to five seconds, turning it and holding it for three to five seconds.
Sometimes people might feel little pops. that's just your spine is readjusting a little bit, so maybe if its out of alignment a little bit its readjusting it.
Thats normal, as long as this is not painful. sometimes it's a very nice relief when you get that little popping.
Be very careful when you're using the foam roll, especially on your neck.
If you feel dizzy, lightheaded, or nauseous, stop immediately, and go see your doctor because that might mean something a little more serious is going on. but don't try and work through that. if you feel it make sure you stop completely.
4.Chestarea Stretches
We'll do some chestarea stretches, upper back stretches because if you have a headache, a lot of times this area might be contributing to that headache. To get relief from that you want to work in all those areas.
5.Scapular Squeeze
This is common, the scapular squeeze or a shoulder squeeze, and what you do is imagine that your hand is on yours pine in the middle of your back, and what you want to do is you want to take those shoulder blades and try and squeeze them together.
But the key is keep your shoulders down. some people do up like, but that's not what you have to do.you want to relax those shoulders and just squeeze them back.
You can move your elbows a little bit. That always feels like it helps , especially when you're doing the first couple times to use your elbows to help squeeze back, but don't just use your elbows to bring them back, make sure you're activating those muscles in the back to bring those shoulder blades together.
You are squeezing those muscles, you are activating them. You are opening up the chest and what that does is that helps strengthen those upper back muscles.
You are not sitting and putting more stress on your neck giving yourself those headaches.
When you come back into that squeeze, hold it for about three to five seconds. you can do about five of those and just again several times throughout the day. you don't have to just do one set, you can do several throughout the day.
6.Chest Stretch
Stretching out your chest or your PEC muscles, cuz same thing, if you're rolling forward and your heads coming forward and you want to get relief from the severe headache chest muscle stretch will help you get back into the position.
Then you don't have that headache anymore. so a great way to stretch out the pecs there's a whole bunch of different ways, but the easiest one is just take your hands clasping behind your back, and what you want to do is push down and out.
While you do that, you are just going to push your chest out forward and we should feel that stretch right through, that is going to be a full stretch where you want to hold it for 30 seconds, you'll get a good stretch there.
If you feel tingling right through your arms as long as it goes away as soon as you stop, that's fine, but if it persists a little bit, then don't keep doing that stretch. but thirty Seconds, three times for that one.
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A lot of times our headaches not just come from the neck, but they come from that upper back thoracic region as well.
Another way to help relieve those headaches is just to loosen everything up back there.. That thoracic spine is a little bit out of alignment, it's going to cause problems in the cervical spine and give you those headaches.
Rolling out the thoracic spine is a really nice way to get everything loosen up. some people just put the rollstraight or horizontally not vertically but horizontally, you have to put it at al in a slightly angled because the segments of our spine processes one on top one on the bottom.
If you have it in an angle it'll just help loosen everything up a little bit more. Make sure to angaling that a little bit and you can really get that spine,just grab your shoulders there, that way but that sometimes gives the shoulder blades in the way.
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If you put them there, they move the shoulder blades out a little bit, and you can just put it up a little bit higher there just so you are doing the thoracic spine,and just rolling up and down a little bit.
Just a little roll you can do it 10-15 seconds and then just change the angle to do it again, rolling it the other way, and you may get a couple more pops that way. it doesn't have to be, you are on the foam roll for five minutes.
It could be a quick five to 10 seconds just to get some releases there because if you get that loose enough in that thoracic spine, that's going to loosen up that cervical spine and give you some headache relief.
SNAGS
Basically that's just getting movement with mobilization. and so the towel does a nice job of the stretch because if you put the towel there you can kind of stabilize one section of the cervical spine while you're stretching the other.Do it very carefully, so you don't choke yourself or strangle yourself, take one side and hold it here so my right hand is going to hold one, and when we go, it's pulling downwards.
It'll take the other side and you will come up and over but you want the towel to go over your ear.but up over your ear and up towards the opposite corner. You're pulling down with the hand, and then up and over to get that stretch.
The bottom part of the towel is stabilizing that bottom segment, and the top part of the towel is mobilizing the top part of the segment.thats whats happens,it gets it nice and strong,but again if you feel pain with this or if you feel some dizziness,lightheadedness, don't do it.
make sure you stop, go see your doctor, go to your physical therapist to make sure, one you're doing it right, and two to make your supposed to be doing it.
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You can hold it just for 3 to 5 second, or you can do it a little bit longer 10 to 15 second, but you don't necessarily have to do it for 30 seconds.you can do those several times throughout the day.
Those were your top 6 treatments for headache relief.
Conclusion.
Headaches are very common ailments; they are most often described as pain in the head or upper neck and can be felt in the specific areas of the head or face, or at the base of the skull.It is estimated 45 million people in the US suffer from recurrent headaches annually.
A Physician can diagnose specific primary headaches, such as migraines by having the patient describe their symptoms to the Physician. There are ranges of rating systems for headache types, it is also possible to diagnose headache by brain imaging techniques such as MRI.
There are several treatments options aside from NSAIDS that are used for treating chronic headaches. Nerve blocks, if successful, are effective medium term treatments for headaches.
Occipital, trigeminal and sphenopalatine ganglion blocks are often indicated for cluster and chronic migraines headaches.
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