What are the dangers of neck massage for neck pain?

Bad habits such as working with your head down for a long time and playing with your phone can cause neck pain. Generally, many people will choose to have a massage to relieve the pain. However, the neck contains many blood vessels and nerves, and the cervical spine itself is very fragile. Improper massage has many hidden dangers to health!

Improper massage can cause many harms

The neck is an important part of the human body. There are many nerves and blood vessels that lead from the cervical spine to the brain. One of them is called the internal cervical artery, which supplies most of the blood to the brain tissue. Many elderly people have atherosclerosis or calcification in the internal cervical artery due to vascular diseases such as high blood pressure and high blood lipids. If you massage the neck casually, it is easy to cause the hardened plaque to fall off, enter the brain with blood, block the blood vessels in the brain, and cause a stroke.

Elderly people with "three highs" should be especially careful

Middle-aged and elderly people, especially those with risk factors such as "three highs" (high blood pressure, high blood lipids, and high blood sugar), smoking, and obesity, should undergo regular carotid ultrasound examinations. If carotid stenosis is found, do not massage the neck casually to prevent a minor illness from causing a major one. Moreover, it is best to ask a professional to perform the massage.

Avoid vigorous neck movements

Elderly people with neck discomfort should not move their neck vigorously, shake their heads less, and should not do the "M-shaped exercise" if they have not undergone X-rays or CT scans. Otherwise, the blood in the carotid artery will swirl, impacting the hardened plaques on the arterial wall, causing them to break and fall off, resulting in arterial thrombosis and cerebral vascular embolism.

If you have cervical spondylosis, don't press it randomly.

Experts suggest that muscle pain can be treated with appropriate massage, but bone pain should not be treated with massage, especially for the elderly whose bones are degenerated and massage can easily cause injury. In addition, if patients with cervical spondylosis have symptoms such as numbness in the fingers, arms, legs and feet in addition to neck and shoulder pain, it means that they may have radiculopathy, and massage should not be done casually.