It’s common to experience dizziness occasionally in your life. You could have stood up too fast, taken a hit on the head, or something else to cause it.
However, if your dizziness is consistent and it also leads to pain, then you might have a condition that’s serious. Dizziness should resolve in a matter of seconds or minutes. However, if you have a neck injury or serious health condition, then dizziness can last several hours and even days.
This might lead you to wonder, can neck pain cause dizziness? After all, sometimes they occur at almost the same time. So in this article, keep reading to discover the connection between neck pain and dizziness.
How The Neck Affects Your Balance
Can a pinched nerve in the neck cause dizziness? Yes, it turns out. Your body is a complex series of nerves, muscles, bones, ligaments, and tissues. All of these work together to help you keep your balance. Your eyes help your brain understand its surroundings.
Your vestibular system is inside of your ear. This helps you balance and detect different movements. When it comes to your spine, this gives the posture needed for your central nervous system to communicate with the other parts of your body.
Finally, your brain interprets this information and then computes it to give you good balance and posture. If any one of the moving parts of your body is disrupted, then your sensations will be off. This can lead to imbalance and lightheadedness.
Since the neck holds part of your spine and nerves, it’s also connected to your brain. Therefore, injury to your neck can affect your brain, spine, and other important parts of your body that control your balance.
Neck Problems And Dizziness
There are several types of neck injuries that can cause dizziness. Let’s talk about some of the main ones that are typically the culprit.
Can A Neck Problem Cause Dizziness? – Whiplash
You may have heard of the word whiplash before. Whiplash often occurs when someone is in a car accident. It can also occur during sports or other significant physical injuries.
Whiplash is essentially a sudden movement in the neck in which it moves back and forth or snaps.
This puts a lot of pressure and strain on the muscles in your neck. Therefore, whiplash is actually more serious than it sounds. It can disrupt the healthy function of nerves in your spine and neck.
It can even cause issues like a herniated disc which lead to pain. Sometimes neck pain occurs after whiplash because of the soreness and stiffness of the muscles that are restricted. However, if you have an injury due to whiplash, then you could also have dizziness as a side effect. It may even be the sign of a concussion.
Can Neck Stiffness Cause Dizziness? – Cervical Vertigo
If you feel like the world is spinning, then this is called vertigo. It’s a kind of dizziness that makes you feel off balance and unconcentrated. Poor neck posture, neck disorders, and spinal injuries can all cause cervical vertigo.
Another name for cervical vertigo is cervicogenic dizziness. This means by simply moving your head or your neck, you feel dizzy. You might also feel headaches, ringing in the ears, nausea, and neck pain as accompanying symptoms.
This type of dizziness can last anywhere from a couple minutes all the way up to several hours.
Can Neck Arthritis Cause Dizziness? – Cervical Spondylosis
The third main type of dizziness caused by neck pain is a degenerative disorder. It’s called cervical spondylosis. This occurs in your spine and neck. Osteoarthritis can happen if you have damage to your body in general in the cervical spine.
Cervical degenerative disc disease also affects your disc’s ability to function properly within your vertebrae or neck. Ultimately, spinal discs can lose their elasticity.
Once they break down, they bother nearby blood vessels and other nerves. This ultimately compresses blood vessels and nerves, leading to pain, dizziness, and neck discomfort.
Treating Neck Pain and Dizziness in Omaha
The best way to experience lasting relief from neck pain in Omaha and dizziness is to address the root cause. In order to treat neck pain causing dizziness, your doctor will want to diagnose what is causing your symptoms.
They will then be able to develop a treatment plan that allows you to experience lasting relief from pain and dizziness.
How To Treat Neck Pain And Dizziness
When treating neck pain and dizziness, you need to attack the root cause. If you simply treat the symptoms, it may help in the short term. However, speaking with a chiropractor or a neck pain relief doctor in Omaha can help you diagnose the real issue.
Now that you know that the answer to “does neck pain cause dizziness” is yes, let’s talk about solutions. Some of the remedies for neck dizziness caused by neck pain are:
Chiropractics
A chiropractic adjustment is a holistic approach to relieving neck pain symptoms. It can fix misalignments in your neck and spine. Often these can be caused by poor alignment.
So by fixing the alignment at its source, your cervical spine can work as it’s intended to. This can often resolve dizziness and pain in the neck.
Massages
Loosening up the muscles around your neck can be helpful for relieving dizziness. Remember that sometimes compression of nerves and vessels is the cause of these symptoms.
Therefore, therapeutic massages around your back, shoulder, or massages can release a lot of tension that you may have been carrying around. When you relieve yourself of stress, you promote healthy circulation, breath support, and concentration.
Exercises and physical therapy
Fom stretches to light cardio to other types of exercises, there are certain things you can do to resolve dizziness. Getting your body moving strong and flexible is important. It will reduce overall tension while strengthening the parts of your body that support good posture.
Ultimately, this supports your neck and cervical area, which can prevent dizziness from taking its toll.
Can A Sore Neck Cause Dizziness: Conclusion
Reach out to the neck pain doctors today. At Midwest Pain Clinics, you can get connected with experts that take a holistic approach to address your musculoskeletal system.
If you have chronic neck pain or dizziness, we will use surgical and non-surgical methods to treat the condition so that you can live pain-free and enjoy your life again.
