Are neck braces perfect for your neck health?
Neck pain is one of the most prevalent and costly health problems in the United States[1]. It remains a complex, subjective experience with a variety of musculoskeletal causes[2]. We have this problem from our bad posture, prolonged sitting, and many hours spent in front of our laptops or smartphones.
For this reason, have been appeared a lot of solutions to manage your neck pain. A neck support brace is something that we feel that we need when we have neck pain. To support our head and rest our muscles, but are these neck braces perfect for your neck health? Check this article.
[1] Cherry DK, Burt CW, Woodwell DA. National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1999 summary. Adv Data Vital Health Stat 2001;322.
[2] Curr Rev Musculoskelet Med. 2008 Jun; 1(2): 114–119. Published online 2007 Dec 12. doi: 10.1007/s12178-007-9017-9 PMCID: PMC2684205 PMID: 19468883 When should a cervical collar be used to treat neck pain?
1st let s understand the principle that stays behind this neck braces. They offer support to your head, and in this way, your neck muscles will become more relaxed because they don’t work anymore. To have better results, you need to have access to a neck brace with specific shapes that respect the anatomical references. Only in these ways can you achieve your purpose, pain relief, and relaxation.
Some problems can appear when you use neck braces for sleep or too much time spent wearing it. Animal experiments have shown that structural changes can be detected in healthy muscle tissue after an immobilization period of only one week.[1] In other words, your muscles can become atrophy, and this will cause more damage to your cervical spine. That’s why it is not recommended to stay more than 15 minutes wearing your neck brace support and not even talking to sleep with on your neck.
Research has been proved that inflatable neck traction devices are the best neck brace to relieve your neck pain. Rather than supporting your head, they offer an adjustable size according to your neck dimension and increase the space between your vertebras. In this way, you can have instant pain relief and more disk oxygenation.
In conclusion, I recommend neck support brace to be used only 15 minutes, 2 3 times/day, and if it is possible to choose the inflatable neck traction devices, which respect your physiological curvatures and are developed by a strong medical team.
Dr. Fix
Ph. Md. Alexander Ilie
[1] Scientific monograph of the Quebec Task Force on Whiplash-Associated Disorders: redefining "whiplash" and its management.
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