Bad habits cause premature aging of the cervical spine. Symptoms and prevention of cervical spondylosis. How to prevent chronic cervical injury?

Due to long-term chronic strain, the age of onset of cervical spondylosis has been advanced from 40 to 30 years old, and it has become a veritable occupational disease for white-collar workers. What is more worrying is that the cervical spine supports the head above and connects to the trunk below. It is not only the most active part of the spine, but also the most important part of the nerve center. It is also the only way for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular vessels. Once a malfunction occurs, the consequences are serious. Please follow us to do an experiment: gently tilt your head back, then try to turn left, then right, and you will definitely feel soreness and stiffness.

Bad habits cause premature aging of the cervical spine

Strain entanglement : There is no doubt that long-term chronic strain is the main cause of premature aging of the cervical spine in young people. Traditional Chinese medicine has the saying "Five strains cause injuries", which means that if we maintain a certain activity state for a long time, it will destroy the body's balance and eventually damage health. If you keep your head down for a long time, ignoring the rest of the cervical spine, the neck muscles will be overly fatigued, causing the body's gravity to be all pressed on the cervical spine. If this continues for a long time, it may induce cervical spondylosis.

Cold and dampness sneak attack : Women are naturally cold, and their limbs are easily cold, and they are particularly sensitive to cold weather. Living in a cold environment, liking cold food, wearing too little, and overwork can easily damage the body's yang energy, making it easy for the weak bones and muscles, wind, cold and dampness to take advantage of the opportunity to enter. The wind, cold and dampness factors in the external environment can cause neck muscle spasms and small blood vessel contraction, leading to soft tissue blood circulation disorders, which will cause cervical spondylosis over time.

Bad posture : The human spine has a unique physiological curve. If we violate the rules and keep it in one posture for a long time, it will eventually lead to imbalance of the body, poor blood circulation, and damage to the muscles and bones. For example, lying down for a long time watching TV or taking a nap in a car are actions that can cause great damage to the cervical spine.

Deficiency of the body : Malnutrition, depression, lack of activity and other factors may lead to physical deterioration, liver and kidney deficiency, and lack of nourishment to tendons and veins. Once the kidney qi is deficient, the waist and knees will become sore, and bone calcium will be lost and degenerated. If you encounter excessive strain or cold and dampness, it is easy to cause cervical problems.

Symptoms of cervical spondylosis

Once neck pain or stiff neck occurs, some people become very nervous and worry that they must have cervical spondylosis. In fact, this situation is mostly caused by excessive fatigue of the cervical spine. Changing posture and giving the cervical spine more rest can generally relieve the symptoms. In addition to neck pain, cervical spondylosis usually also has symptoms such as dizziness, vertigo, chest tightness, nausea, vomiting, numbness of the limbs, and unsteady walking. You can go to the hospital for diagnosis through X-rays, MRI, vertebral artery angiography, etc.

For those who surf the Internet for a long time and often work in front of the screen, based on the above, you can take a small test to see if your cervical spine is okay? Flexible, sensitive, strong... Have these adjectives gradually left you, and are replaced by frequent cervical pain?

Maybe it’s because you drive so often that you often feel weak in your limbs and unsteady when you walk recently?

How many times have you had unexplained stiff neck attacks in recent months?

In addition to neck discomfort, you often feel dizzy, blurred vision, and palpitations. Do you associate this with a heart disease?

After finishing writing the plan for tomorrow's meeting, you find that your shoulders are so sore that you can't lift them?

You have a sore neck and back, so you take time out to go to a nearby beauty salon for a massage. The pain gets better, but a few days later it gets worse? You never fall behind in your fashion, wearing suspenders in the summer and low-necked shirts in the winter, often showing off your sexy neck?

Your eyesight has deteriorated again, and it's time to change your glasses. Are your eyes easily tired, afraid of light, and prone to tears? If you already have some of the above characteristics, then you should be alert to the possibility of cervical spondylosis.

Self-examination method for cervical spondylosis

The symptoms of cervical spondylosis mainly include stiff neck, poor mobility, occasional pain, etc. Experts point out five possible symptoms that may indicate cervical spondylosis. Friends who work at a desk for a long time can test themselves. If the following five conditions occur, it is best to go to the hospital to check whether you have cervical spondylosis:

1. Pain in the back of the neck, which can be relieved by pulling the head and neck upward with hands, but aggravated by pressing downward;

2. Patients with neck pain accompanied by radiating pain and numbness in the upper limbs;

3. When closing eyes, rotating the head and neck left and right, causing migraine or dizziness;

4. Patients with neck pain accompanied by weakness and limb pain in the upper and lower limbs;

5. When lowering the head, the whole body suddenly becomes numb or feels like an electric shock. ?

It is never better to prepare for a rainy day than to mend the fold after the sheep have been stolen. Instead of waiting until the cervical spine is injured and then undergoing long and tedious treatment, it is better to take the initiative and let the cervical spine receive our good care to avoid accidents.

Tips for maintaining a healthy cervical spine

7:00 AM - Automatic temperature control in the morning

Ancient people liked to wear long clothes, on the one hand for etiquette, but also for health. Whether in winter or summer, you should keep your cervical spine at a comfortable temperature. Even for beauty, you should prepare a shawl in the office to protect your neck and back. If you occasionally catch a cold, make yourself a bowl of cold-dispelling soup: the ingredients are 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 7 slices of ginger, boil in water for 10 minutes, and drink 1 to 2 times to drive away the cold.

10:00——5 minutes of cervical spine exercises

Even if you are in a crowded office, you can still maintain your cervical spine. For example, you can use the breaks between work to practice cervical spine exercises: sit upright, keep your whole body still, and move your head, lowering your head, raising your head, turning left, turning right, extending forward, and retracting; do clockwise and counterclockwise movements. Do it for 5 minutes each time, and the movements should be gentle and soft.

14:00——Two massage methods

After a morning of work, by 2 p.m., your neck may be exhausted and your energy may be running low. Here are two simple first aid methods:

(1) There are three points of Bailao acupoint on the back of the neck, from the base of the skull to the upper torso. When you are working hard, you may want to take a few minutes to massage these three points to instantly relieve cervical fatigue and relax your whole body.

(2) Cross the fingers of both hands and place them behind the neck. Rub the neck back and forth gently. Do this 50 times in a row. When the neck becomes warm, you will feel relaxed and comfortable.

18:00——Do some outdoor sports

The nutrition of cartilage tissue is not supplied by blood, but by changes in pressure. If there is a lack of activity, the cartilage will suffer from malnutrition and then degenerate. Increasing outdoor activities is one of the ways to maintain the cervical spine. The sports recommended to you are swimming, playing ball, practicing yoga, etc.

20:00——Dinner to nourish the kidneys

As a busy white-collar worker, you may not have enough time to prepare healthy and nutritious breakfast and lunch, so you can eat some food that nourishes the bone marrow at dinner. Chinese medicine believes that walnuts, cornus fruit, raw earth, black sesame, and ox bones have the function of nourishing the kidney marrow. You can add these ingredients to your dinner to strengthen your bones and muscles and delay the degeneration of the kidneys and spine.

21:00——Learn to spread your wings like a roc

When watching TV, you can imitate the roc spreading its wings: gently bend your waist to 90 degrees, stretch your arms out like a roc flying, but don't lift your head up, the higher the better, and keep doing it for 5 minutes. This action can help you increase the toughness of the cervical spine muscles.

22:00——Enjoy hot compress with traditional Chinese medicine

Heat a little fennel and half a pound of salt, put it in a cloth bag, and apply it on the back of the neck for 30 minutes. Do this once a day. It can improve blood circulation in the back of the neck and relieve muscle spasms. Be careful not to keep the temperature too high or for too long.

23:00——Choose a healthy pillow

Pillows and beds are also close friends of the cervical spine. Pillows that are too high or too low, and mattresses that are too soft will affect the cervical spine. The width of the pillow should reach the shoulders, and the ingot-shaped health pillow with a low middle and high ends has a good support effect on the cervical spine and allows the cervical spine to get a good rest; for people with bad cervical vertebrae, wooden beds and palm-stretch beds are the best choices, and the overly soft bed is definitely not good for the cervical spine.

How to prevent chronic cervical spine injury

Keeping your head down for a long time will cause the muscles behind your neck to become overly fatigued, which will put all the gravity on the cervical bones. Over time, this will cause the cervical disc to protrude and lead to cervical spondylosis. Some occupations are prone to chronic strain due to long-term bowing or looking up.

Among them, chronic injury is a major cause of cervical spondylosis, but because its onset is slow, it is often not paid attention to. Therefore, to prevent cervical spondylosis, we must develop good living and working habits, start from the details of daily life, avoid the neck from being in a state of fatigue for a long time, and thus protect the cervical spine.

Prevention 1: Rotate your neck every hour at work. The nerves in the human neck are compressed for a certain period, and generally, the limit is about one hour. Therefore, if your job requires you to lower your head, raise your head, or perform other actions for a long time, you should take a break every hour or so to relax your neck to avoid overloading the neck. At this time, you can relax your neck and rotate it slowly.

Prevention 2: Raise or lower the seat to adjust the body position. Accountants, editors, typists, secretarial workers and other professions who need to face the computer or write at a desk for a long time have their cervical spine in a flexed position or certain specific positions for a long time, which not only increases the pressure in the cervical intervertebral disc, but also makes the neck muscles in a state of uncoordinated stress for a long time, making cervical spondylosis prone to occur.

Experts point out that the sitting posture should be as natural as possible to maintain the normal physiological curve of the human body. Generally, office chairs can be raised or lowered to achieve a suitable position with the desktop computer so that the neck is not too tired. It is recommended to look straight at or slightly downward at the computer, and avoid looking up at the computer, otherwise the neck will easily get tired.

Prevention 3: The correct sitting posture for office workers is that their eyes are parallel to the ground; their upper arms are perpendicular to their forearms, their upper arms are perpendicular to the ground, their forearms and hands are parallel to the ground; their backs are perpendicular to their thighs, their backs are perpendicular to the ground, their thighs are parallel to the ground; their thighs and calves are perpendicular or naturally bent, and their feet are supported by the ground or footrests; Prevention 4: The pillow should best adapt to the physiological curvature of the cervical spine. The height of the pillow during sleep will also affect the cervical spine. If the pillow is too low, the head and neck will inevitably lean back excessively, causing excessive tension in the muscles and ligaments in front of the cervical vertebrae, which will cause fatigue over time and even cause chronic injuries; if the pillow is too high, it is easy to cause deformation of the muscles and ligaments of the neck, causing strain on the muscles and ligaments behind the cervical spine.

The pillow should be based on the individual's physiological position. Generally speaking, the pillow should be moderately thick and not too high, and the width should reach the shoulder, so that the cervical spine can bear the weight and get enough rest. The ideal pillow should be in line with the physiological curvature requirements of the cervical spine, with a low middle and high ends.

Precautions

Cervical spondylosis seriously troubles modern urbanites. Touch your neck, is it a little stiff? Turn it around, do you feel any pain? Be careful, don't let cervical spondylosis find you. Let's treat the cervical spine well and treat health well!