in the crack of a neck

Love to give your neck a bit of a crack ? perhaps that neck crack, despite feeling good, is not actually doing your body any good at all !

One of my clients who visited a while back has chronic stiffness and aches. Neck and shoulders, hips and lower back. Body stiff, and forget about touching toes !

Treatments over time had reduced that stiffness and aches, but they hadn’t been fully resolved.

When I assessed her on the table, one leg was pulled short, it was hard to bend her knees, one side of the spine was firm, the neck and jaw tough. I worked through where the assessments indicated work was needed. By the end, her body was balanced, the spine felt softer and even in tone, the legs were level and could move easily, the neck felt mobile again. Sitting up, her shoulders looked more level and relaxed.

And then… she tilted her head to the side… and cracked her neck…

When you crack your neck, the fluid-filled facet joints between the vertebrae stretch, allowing them to put less pressure on the joint. As the pressure decreases, the fluid in the joints turn to gas and make a popping or cracking noise.

For many people, just hearing that cracking sound results in a positive mental effect (even if it doesn’t actually relieve pressure in the neck) – a placebo effect.

Research also indicates that cracking your neck or other joints releases a small amount of endorphins. Endorphins are chemicals in your brain that makes you feel good.

With that little endorphin rush each time you hear that sound, neck cracking can easily become a habit.

Cracking your neck can be harmful if it’s not done correctly or it’s done too often.

Too forceful a crack can result in pinched nerves in the neck – which can be extremely painful.

Strong neck cracking can also strain the muscles around the joints, as well as the joints themselves. When these muscles or joints become strained, moving the neck can actually feel more difficult.

Giving in to that urge to crack your neck too often can result in ligaments becoming permanently stretched. This creates instability in the neck, with those stretched ligaments are less able to keep the spine in place, allowing vertebrae to move and placing increased pressure on discs and nerves. That strain on ligaments can also cause inflammation, causing further pain. Continuing to crack that neck can then put neck joints at a higher risk of developing osteoarthritis.

Your neck is also home to important blood vessels and arteries that run through the neck to the brain. In rare but possible scenarios, cracking your neck too hard can puncture or dissect an artery. This tear can result in a blood clot, which can be dangerous when it blocks blood flow to the brain. If the clot travels to the brain, it can cause an ischemic stroke.

The central nervous system is the body’s control system. It transmits signals from the brain via the spinal cord and nerves to all parts of the body.

When the body is balanced, the nervous system can make the body work really well – muscles work well, organs function nicely. When there’s an irritation to the nervous system, nerves can’t properly send their signals to the body, resulting in muscle tensions.

The dura mater is a tough membrane that covers the brain and the spinal cord, running from the head down to the coccyx. This dura mater attaches to the skeleton at the base of the skull and upper neck, as well as the sacrum and coccyx. A restriction at one of these attachment sites can create problems at any point in the body.

While Bowen Therapists use relaxing moves across the whole body, the areas that make the big difference in restoring the nervous system for the entire body are around the pelvis – and the neck !

As soon as my client cracked her neck, her neck alignment and shoulders visibly changed.

Since we had time that evening, I asked her to lie back down to reassess, to see the impact.

One leg was pulled back short, it was hard to bend her knees again, one side of the spine returned to spasm, the neck was back to feeling tough.

Rather than providing relief, that habitual neck crack had re-irritated her nervous system, created tension and pulled the body back out of balance.

I quickly repeated key moves to bring her body back. However, key to long term relief would involve no longer cracking the neck…

Perhaps it’s time to break that habit.

Chances are that crack of the neck could be causing the problems in the body, rather than provide relief from them.