Hi, this is Dr. Joanne Helpert, Doctor of Chiropractic; the topic for today is noisy necks.
I often have patients asked me “Hey Doc, I’m hearing this noise in my neck, this creek-creek- creek, is that okay?” And that’s a great question, and it’s not, it’s not an easy answer because at times that grinding and popping sound, well, if it’s a grinding it’s always a problem, what’s happening is that over the course of time, if we don’t take care of for spines, if we don’t stretch, if we don’t really take care of our bodies or necks start to contract and the muscles and the ligaments start to get brittle and your body is, in an attempt to open that up, is some of that grinding and noise that you hear.
So that’s one side of it.
The other side of it is, it could be a popping and that can actually be a sign of a healthy spine, especially if it’s not happening all the time and it’s happening in different places.
So, it depends on the type of sound and also your experience of it. I mean you kind of know when it’s ‘uhhh unpleasant’ versus ‘oh, this is releasing energy and this is actually something that is helpful.’
The best way to know though is to have an expert, somebody who is really trained in evaluating the spine and nervous to give you information on that. But if you’re hearing sounds that concern you definitely get that checked out.