Why Do You Feel Nauseous When Your Neck Hurts?
Neck pain is definitely awful; if the fact that your neck hurts is preventing you from moving normally, causing you headaches or even making you feel nauseous, it’s worth it to learn more about your pain and how to find relief. Your neck pain might be caused by overuse, injury, degenerative disease or poor body posture, and while most neck pain goes away with some rest, neck pain can often not go away or it can keep recurring and start interfering with your quality of life. Your best bet? Often to have it evaluated by a good physiotherapist or chiropractor. These professionals can give you a legal diagnosis for your neck pain, and can tell you whether or not you’ll need an x-ray, ultrasound or MRI. Plus, if appropriate they can offer you some lasting relief and even give you exercises you can do at home to help make your treatment most effective. Other therapies that your Yellow Gazebo chiropractor or physiotherapist can recommend at the clinic include acupuncture, osteopathy and massage therapy.
But what is the relationship between neck pain and nausea? This can be explained by a few different reasons, and certainly any severe symptoms should be cause to seek attention from your family doctor to rule out anything serious. However, often nausea from neck pain is caused by neck pain related to cervical (aka cervicogenic) headaches. These types of headaches are usually dull, constant, and can be just on one side of your head or on both sides. With cervical headaches you might also feel a gripping sensation in your head, or feel like there’s a band around your head squeezing your skull. There is often tenderness at the base of your skull with these types of headaches, and they are caused by various abnormalities in your neck (such as the reasons for neck pain described above).
What’s really happening with cervical headaches is that more likely than not a nerve is being compressed, and/or muscles that attach into the base of your skull are being irritated. This can cause strange sensations such as feeling lightheaded, dizzy, or nauseous. It may even explain mood swings, an inability to concentrate, and issues with balance. The reason that you feel nauseous (or any of these symptoms) when your neck hurts therefore, is because these nerve roots and/or muscles connect to much more than just your neck, including your stomach. The phrenic nerve in fact, originates from your 3rd cervical vertebrae in your neck and innervates your diaphragm. This may explain how some neck pain causes nausea. Remember - your body is a whole being, not a bunch of independent parts as many medical professions would have you believe.
All the more reason to seek natural health care - without the need to prescribe pharmaceutical drugs, we can offer many alternatives that have lasting, profound effects on your health.
If you’d like some more information, would like to book a free consultation or would like to go ahead and schedule an appointment at Yellow Gazebo, please give us a call at 416-909-2334, email us at info@yellowgazeboclinic.com, or use the online booking link below. We’ll be happy to help you get on your way to optimum health.
