- by Kevin Bos, Physiotherapist, Co-Owner Sun City Physiotherapist
You wake up in the morning and can’t turn or tip your head to one side without excruciating pain. It’s puzzling because you don’t recall any predisposing incident. You just may have been victim to the ever so common “wry neck”.
Wry neck is a common term to describe a kinked neck triggered suddenly, predominantly on one side of the neck, and usually precipitated by sleep. In most cases, through the night one gets, shall we say, too comfortable. Your neck relaxes and a particular joint settles into a position that gets it a bit stuck. As the joint settles into an awkward position as you sleep, the muscles gradually notice this and progressively go into spasm as a form of protection.
In some cases you may get woken from the pain and spasm, but in others you may not notice it until you go to move in the morning. In either case, your best plan of action is to get it sorted as soon as possible before the spasm becomes chronic tightness.
I have found quite a bit of success treating this with a manual therapy approach through a technique we call muscle energy. The trick is to get the muscle spasm and guarding down so the joint can return to a neutral position. Muscle energy is essentially a hands on manual technique of contract/relax where you and I push and pull together in specific ways related to cervical joint mechanics to release the muscle and joint restriction in order to restore normal joint motion. With classic wry neck, within a 2-3 sessions, most restrictions resolve.
There are some wry neck cases that are more stubborn. Often in these scenarios, the joint can have a meniscoid entrapment where synovial joint tissue gets caught in the edge of the joint disallowing the surface to rest freely. These are much more difficult to treat in that they may require a more specialized technique called joint manipulation to release the entrapment. Once again, most of these problems resolve within a few sessions.
It’s no fun to look at your friends sideways, the sooner you get it looked at, the sooner you’re back in action.
This is provided as general information only and is not intended to be relied upon as medical advice. Kevin Bos is a registered physiotherapist and Co-Owner of Sun City Physiotherapy. He has a Diploma of Manual and Manipulative Physiotherapy and holds a certificate in Sports Physiotherapy and IMS. He can be contacted at Sun City Physiotherapy’s downtown, St. Paul Street clinic by calling 250.861.8056, or via email at: kbos@suncityphysiotherapy.com
