Sure, you can drink yourself into a complete stupor, you won’t feel a whole lot, but the next morning is another story. The next morning, if the problem was neck pain; it’ll probably be worse.
The first thing is that sleeping in an awkward position will make the pain worse. It will throw your neck posture way off. This puts pressure on the nerves and contributes to pain. We’ll talk more about this later, but for now, let’s talk more about sleeping position. This “sleeping position” comes right down to ‘posture’!
With something like the Cervical Linear Traction Neck Pillow (a good neck pillow) you correct posture while you sleep. And sleep comfortably I might add. You see, getting a good nights sleep, often comes down to no unwanted spinal stressors like nerve pressure.
So as you guessed, using a good pillow will help. But for immediate pain relief when you can’t run to your masseuse or Chiropractor takes some self treatment right where you are.
The first thing we are going to do is some neck muscle massage. This can be easily done with just you and a hand. Take your finger tips that reach that particular spot easiest and massage in a circular motion. I like to use my index in middle finger.
Next, a great thing to do is use your knuckles to strip out the muscle. This sometimes works better or using a gel or even doing it in the shower where you have something to lather up on your neck. This makes it easier to massage her neck and not give yourself a skin burn. Take your hand and make a fist and use your knuckles to run down the muscles.
Another thing to do is put yourself in the stretch position for the muscle you want to work on. While in that position, run the knuckles down along that muscle. Repeat this 2 or 3 times. If you find a particular knot you would like to work on, press and hold for 7-10 seconds. You can repeat this one a few times too, if you like.
The last thing to do is using a heat or ice pack. I like ones that function as both; you could use as ice pack or put microwave and make it a hot pack. Often times after muscle work I heat the area to relax it.
Usually ice pack usage is slightly different; ice packs are typically good for reducing inflammation of a particular muscle; put an ice pack on for 10-20 minutes, take it off of the same out of time. Repeat this process a few times. This seems to work well for getting rid of inflammation and relaxing the muscles. The key is really to get rid of the inflammation. It is that inflammation and will put the pressure on the nerves and cause your pain.
So good luck at getting rid of your neck pain at home!