Won Body Won Life, Ep 3: How I Overcame Chronic Neck Pain in 4 Steps

In this episode, I uncover my battles with chronic neck pain, what I tried that didn't work long term, and 4 pivotal things that helped me achieve freedom from pain.

Chronic neck pain is becoming more prevalent because of our high stress busy environments, increasing number of jobs subjected to a laptop, and the ever-growing addiction to phones and screens.

Adopting these 4 strategies will be a stepping stone towards pain freedom. Let's dive in!

Scroll down for the show transcript.

Ep 3 Transcript

Welcome to the Won Body Won Life podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jason Won, lifestyle physical therapist.

And if you're new to the channel, or just coming back, I appreciate if you click that subscribe or follow button. And also leave a comment or review, the more comments and reviews that we get, and the more people that subscribe, the more that this will reach other people that have not seen the Won Body Won Life podcast. So I definitely appreciate your support.

Today, I wanted to talk about how I overcame chronic neck pain using four key strategies that I know can help you today. So if you're somebody that is either you feel like you're getting older, you feel that your body is breaking down. And honestly, a lot of times that you either go through repeat injuries, when you try to do things that you'd like to do, or you in general just have chronic neck, shoulder, or low back pain, this is going to be very pertinent to you.

So definitely stick around for the 4 tips I'm going to share with you today. But we'll start off by sharing how I actually got into a chronic pain cycle, how long that occurred, and why it started to occur. And I wanted to share four key strategies that I know will help you today.

And I went through trial and error, I tried a bunch of different things. That probably sounds familiar, as many people with chronic pain often try many things and still can't find a solution. And oftentimes, accept their current way of living. And so they joined Facebook groups, they join communities, they join other people, and they consider that they suffer together.

And I don't want that to be the case, I really feel that with the right strategies, the right lifestyle modifications, I truly think that the world can be a better place if chronic pain is not a part of their life.

So when I was 17 years of age, like many people, I got my driver's license. And as a result of my driver's license, I was given a 2008, Scion TC and it was amazing. I still drive it till today, minus the fact that it has a few things here and there because I live in San Francisco and people love to hit people's cars.

So in any case, I digress. I personally loved to drive, I was driving everywhere. I was driving to malls, I was driving to school at UC Davis. And so there was one night where it was Black Friday, and I was driving a bunch of friends when I was driving, we're driving about 70 to 75 miles an hour. And what had happened was my tire indicators. I basically, when I first got the car, apparently there was a little bit of a mix-up, there was an indicator light that wasn't working, which was a tire indicator light.

And so I either one, I either snagged a tire, I either ran over a spike or something. And so I was driving down 75 miles an hour. And within an instant, our tire started to spin and we actually saw the tire going past it sounds like that. That's weird, because we're seeing a tire that's going faster than a car. And within a split second, my car started spinning violently. To the left, we spun into the fast lane. And then we hit the island on a freeway.

So we actually hit a car, the car didn't hit us very hard. But we actually did hit an island. And so everybody in the car actually was pretty okay. And I was actually pretty fine too, minus the fact that I had a little bit of a neck strain.

But then within that timeframe of getting into that car accident, I talked about in my first episode that my dad was actually diagnosed with stage four cancer. So a mixture of getting into the car accident, plus a very detrimental event in my life. Those two things created a concoction that led to me dealing and suffering with chronic pain.

So many people think that they were dealt a bad hand of cards. They think that they have a bad back, a bad knee. But the truth is chronic pain is often a mixture of different factors in our life, it's oftentimes very environmental is oftentimes a mixture of lifestyle. So things as if you are poor versus rich, people with lower income generally have more chronic pain that is a life stressor. If you're somebody that has bad relationships around you, that often can be a life stressor as well. And so that oftentimes manifests itself as physical pain.

If you're somebody that went through an injury, and developed a lot of fear and anxiety around the injury or you repeatedly hurt yourself, that changes your mindset around exercise and activity, so that often leads to chronic pain. So in a nutshell, chronic pain is never just one factor. And it's always a series of multifactorial experiences.

So for me getting into the car accident, plus my dad dealing with stage for cancer, and then eventually passing away in 2008, after 2008 is when an immediate turn in my life where I couldn't focus in school, my grades were going down, I isolated myself, I basically isolated myself minus a couple friends that I felt close to. And so I really started isolating myself.

And within an instance of enjoying my freshman year of college, within my sophomore year, I was dealing with chronic neck pain. And I often times see that a lot of people, they have to hide it. So as a young 19-year-old going into my year 20, I had to simply just hide these things. Although it seemed normal, although I still somewhat looked athletic, people didn't know that I was suffering with an invisible pain, which was neck and back issues. So that is how my chronic pain started.

And so I wanted to dive now into how I overcame this chronic pain. Chronic Pain basically lasted about three to five years, I tried massaging, I tried chiropractic, I tried straightening up my posture, I tried postural braces, I tried creams, I tried a number of things. I probably tried maybe a few grand worth of different treatments and creams and different things that I bought without a solution. Everything that I tried was temporary. And so let me know if that is something that you deal with as well. Do you deal with chronic pain? And have you tried multiple things, and you haven't found a solution.

So I can only speak from my experiences as somebody that has done the research that is now a Doctor of Physical Therapy, specializing orthopedics specializing in helping people with chronic pain. And I wanted to share my experiences because I did start a program that is a mixture of different trainings, video trainings that I created, along with me coaching, so I wanted to share some of the four strategies that I know that can help.

So the first thing is I prided myself in being an insomniac. So that was something that either the insomnia started with video games, and watching a bunch of TV and all that stimulation, I thought that that was partly cause of my insomnia. The other cause was I identified as an insomniac, because my mom and other people and other family members, we were all people that kind of struggled with sleep. So I was like, hey, you know, if that's me, that's going to be who I am. And so this insomnia, I think, made things even worse. And the other factors in terms of my dad passing, also led to even more sleep issues.

So the first factor that I addressed, I think, really made a huge step in the right direction. So number one, is that I started to get better, longer and higher quality sleep. And so I can, I've actually built a full course on this. But I wanted to share just a couple strategies.

One is you need to dedicate yourself to getting seven to nine hours of sleep. If you wake up lethargic, you wake up with less energy, then you're going to assume different postures at work, your body is not going to be fully recovered after a long day of work or after taking care of the kids.

Or let's say you're exercising the day before, your body's not going to recover. So you're increasing your chances of injury. And also your body is just in general, just much more lethargic, less oxygenated. And therefore that is what causes chronic tension and pain in the body.

So when I started to get seven to nine hours of sleep, and I started to make certain boundaries around sleep, so I started to have better sleep rituals, like stretching and doing mobility work right before sleep, I started to write a lot of things down in a journal so that those thoughts in task and to dues were no longer swimming in my head. So I actually still do that till today. And I continue to reassess my sleep patterns on a weekly basis.

And so when I started to do that consistently, I started to notice my pain levels were dropping down at least 25 to 30%, my body was no longer just this continuous 6789 out of 10 pain, I actually used to almost fall asleep on the drive home, or a lot of times my pain would just kind of like get me off the roads or like when I would drive.

So when I started to get much better sleep, obviously, you're going to be much more alert, you're going to assume better postures in certain ways. And at the same time, you're going to have more energy to do strength training and have more motivation to do more mobility work.

But when we're getting poor sleep, that is when we can't focus. We have no energy for activities, so therefore it just becomes a repeat vicious cycle. We're waking up with more pain, we're more lethargic, therefore, that's a cycle that you need to change. Change, which is to get better sleep.

So number two is I started to focus much less on posture. And I know I just said the word posture. And posture is basically just what we assume in space. So there's two types of postures, your static posture. And then there's dynamic posture. static posture is simply just the position that I'm in. So if you're watching this video right now, or as I'm recording this, I'm simply just sitting in a chair, and I'm sitting in a relatively straight posture. And so that is the posture I'm in, I'm sitting, plus, I'm sitting up straight.

Now you're sitting on the floor, you're sitting on the floor, and maybe crisscross applesauce. And you're sitting in that certain position, a little bit slumped, that is a static posture.

Dynamic posture is how we move in space. So when we're picking up something off the floor, that is dynamic in nature, we get into a squat position, and then we transition into a standing position to pick a box off the floor or pick up your baby off the floor. That is dynamic posture.

But what I realized is that in orthopedics, and it especially in a clinic, let's say you go to a clinic, an orthopedic doctor’s office, a chiropractor's office, a physical therapy office, look on the walls. And what you'll see is, a lot of times, these postural posters that are complete, I think, myths, or I think they actually throw people off.

So you'll see on the left-hand side, and you'll see a person slumping down, you'll see them at a computer, and their back is slightly rounded. And then what you'll see is that they'll say that's bad posture. And you'll see on the right-hand side, you'll see like a green checkmark. And we'll say this is good posture. And good posture is all 90-degree angles at the knees, the ankles, the hips, you'll see 90 degrees at the arms, you'll see that the person's head is right on top of their torso. And you'll see a person sitting up super, super straight. And they'll say that's the correct posture.

Now, I don't know about you guys, but I know for a fact I've spoken to hundreds, if not 1000s of people that have said that they have neck and back and low back issues because they have poor posture. And oftentimes poor posture is assumed. Because they see these postures or they see these images, they see these products being marketed to them saying this is a posture corrector. And it makes them sit up tall. And they'll see these posters in these offices. And they'll say, this is bad posture, which is slumped, and they'll see good posture, which this is sitting up straight.

And what I found, especially in my experience in my own life, along with the people that I've helped in the past my clients is that there is no such thing as perfect posture, and I need you to get that completely out of your head. There is no such thing as perfect posture. In fact, when I was sitting up very straight in the car, I was sitting up straight at work, I was sitting up straight in class, when in my 20s when I was in college, is that my pain was a lot worse when I assumed as posture.

So creating and assuming these perfect postures, were actually making my pain worse, my pain was not just starting in my neck, but my pain started to travel down my back, my shoulders felt very stiff, because I was constantly squeezing my shoulders down and back. I was consistently chin tucking, I was consistently trying to keep my shoulders down away from my ears. And that was creating a lot more issues in my life.

If you think about this way I've said this before in my social media posts, is that if you look at people in the military soldiers, you'll see that almost 99% of them have the most perfect posture in the world. If you think about it, like look up army look up soldier, you'll see that everybody has the most perfect posture in the world. If they don't have perfect posture, they're probably getting kicked out of the army.

But if you look at the statistics, it actually shows that over 40 to 50% of people in the army when they come back home, for example, they actually suffer with chronic pain the most, yet they have the most perfect posture. So you can see that the dots don't connect whatsoever. They have perfect posture, but they have pain. So is your pain truly related to gesture posture? Absolutely not.

What I realized though, is that, here's your number two tip, is that your best posture is actually just your next posture. You won't think about just sitting up tall day, which is going to create, I think different unwanted tension in other areas along with creating more tension potentially in that area that you have painted. So when you think about your best posture is your next posture.

I often think about just creating timers at work. So if you're having a desk job, for example, creating a timer, where you just have a timer go off every 30, 60 minutes, or let's say you have a vibration on your phone or your watch that goes off saying, ‘hey, you need to start moving around’ is that when you can start to move more, is when you notice that the pain becomes less, you don't think about just sitting up tall all day.

But you can actually give yourself that permission to slumped down sometimes our shoulders and those muscles in your back and in your neck need a chance to relax. So it's perfectly okay to slouch to round out. And in fact, that can be very relieving. Go ahead and pause this podcast right now. And try to just slumped down and see how that feels on your shoulder. See how it feels on your neck in your lower back.

I can argue that for some of you guys, you might have more pain slumping down, but a lot of you guys might feel better saying wow, I actually feel that my muscles are relaxed, they're no longer that tight when you can change positions. So again, number two tip is your best posture, your neck posture. And don't forget that make sure to create timers and reminders, make sure to keep moving our body depends on movement for relief.

So number three is I started to believe more in strength training than I do stretching. Another thing that has become extremely popular is when your neck is tight, you need to stretch it out. We see it all over Google, all over social media, we see that we constantly see the levator scapulae stretches, the scalene stretches, the upper trapezius stretches the forward fold, and stretch out your lower back. And so while this is not ever a bad exercise, I actually incorporate a little bit of stretching in my life.

What I realized, though, is that tight muscles in my neck or in my back, are not always being relieved with stretching. In fact, there are a lot of times where I wake up with a kink neck. And if I try to stretch out my upper trap or my levator muscle, it actually makes things worse. And so when you stretch things out, there is actually a lot of research that shows that static stretching can cause detriment to your performance. As in if you try to stretch out your hamstrings for 60 seconds, or 90 seconds before you run can actually increase your mile time, you will actually run slower or potentially increase your risk of injury with static stretching.

So again, I'm not demonizing static stretching. But I do find that when people do have a lot of chronic pain is that they're often told way too much to praise stretching, when instead what helped me the most in life was picking up dumbbells picking up super bands picking up a barbell, and actually strength training muscles in my neck, but also around my neck. When I started to strength train more, I started to feel that my muscles were activated, I started to feel that my muscles were supporting my spine.

And so when you stretch too often, like I said, if you stretch too often, that can somewhat decrease your proprioception it can decrease your awareness of your body and space. And again, static stretching has been shown to potentially increase your risk of injury. So strength training for me, I bias myself towards strength training so much. Because when I look at the overall journey of life, the average age of a person that passes away is around 85, slowly becoming 90 years of age because of technology and new advances in health.

But when I think about quality of life, I think about my ability to walk wherever I want to, I think about my ability to get off the couch or to get off the toilet. If you have any older individuals in your life like a grandpa or let's say your mom or dad that maybe is losing their strength, you'll see that their quality of life is no longer good because they need help getting off the couch or they need a grab bar to get into a shower or to get off of the toilet.

So if you want your body to sustain itself, and not just to sustain yourself as you age, but also to decrease your pain tremendously. Strength training should be at the forefront versus stretching. So when I strength train, my neck pain immediately gets better. When I strength train my legs. I know for a fact that as I get older, I should be able to get off the couch. If you stretch all day and you don't focus on if you don't focus on strength training and all you do is stretch, is that going to give you the ability to keep walking? Are you going to have the strength to keep walking and to get off the couch?

So that's why I'm so much more biased toward strength training. Because in my life when I was told to stretch by chiropractics, and, and PTs, before it became PT, I noticed that my pain would just come back immediately stretching was not doing it. In fact, the pain would just come back, maybe 30 seconds later, maybe it will last for a few minutes. But when I strength trained my neck, when I loaded my neck up, and I loaded the muscles that surrounded my neck, I noticed a huge difference, I would notice weeks days, I would notice that my body was capable when I finally felt able, and no longer disabled.

Okay, so last and final tip number four. Number four is do not identify as your diagnoses or your X ray. And I'll say that again, number four is do not identify as your diagnoses, or X rays, or MRIs or imaging.

I'll tell you a little story that when I fell into a chronic pain cycle, I actually sought out a chiropractor, and the chiropractor actually saw them at a mall, a local mall that I always spend time at. And they were saying like, “Hey, I mean, do you have neck issues?” So I was like, “Yes, I do”. So I basically got a free X ray, I got a free consultation.

And so what they told me was things that created a lot of fear in me, they actually said you have a spine of an 80-year-old, I will never forget that. At the age of 20. I was told you have a spine of an 80-year-old. You have degeneration here, you have degeneration here, you have degeneration in I believe like C4, C5, C6, that is exactly what I was told. They said you have a reversed lordotic curvature.

If you think about all those words that are being thrown at me at the age of 20, somebody that has no knowledge of health, that created a lot of anxiety, and depression. And thinking about the future of where am I going to be in five years, I already have degeneration, I already have a crooked spine, I already have a spine of an 80-year-old, where am I going to be in my 30s and 40s.

And so as those negative thoughts filled up my head, those negative thoughts and that diagnoses of multilevel degeneration and crooked spine led me to having more pain, my negative thoughts lead to negative actions, those negative actions created more pain in itself.

And so I'm here to tell you right now that if you are somebody that has chronic pain, and you've been told a certain diagnoses, and let's say you have some knowledge of what the diagnosis is, but in general, it just makes you feel more fragile or more disabled, or creates more fear and anxiety around things.

Let's say you were diagnosed with a herniated disc in your lower back. And that was five years ago? Do you still identify as a person with a herniated disc? Do you move differently? Or do you move cautiously? Do you second guess picking up a box off the floor because you have a herniated disk? Do you fear twisting or bending your spine because you're diagnosed with a herniated disc? And so what you're doing there is you're creating fear-mongering behavior, you're creating a narrative of “I am fragile”, and “I'm not sure what's going to happen if I do too much”.

And so when I got past that, and it took me a while it actually took me a few years to get past what that practitioner told me of multilevel degeneration and a crooked spine. I was told those things. But soon enough, as I did more of the research, and I went into physical therapy school, I soon realized that if I don't identify as my diagnoses, I can overcome anything.

I started to believe that I was strong again, I started to identify as an athlete, I started to identify as a person that could lift heavy things, without issues without flare-ups without pain. And I started to identify as a person that was confident versus fearful.

Identity is such a powerful thing. And I've said this to many of my clients before: that you can have the most perfect exercise plan, the perfect nutrition plan, you can have all these things going for you, and have all these different practitioners giving you the exact tools for success. But you cannot use those tools or those tools are rendered less effective if you continue to identify as your diagnoses, which puts you in a negative light.

As soon as you can start identifying as the person you want to become, versus the person that you were before or the person that a practitioner deemed you to be. Then you can finally start to overcome this once and for all.

And so I give you these four tips because these are four strategies and lifestyle changes and mindset changes that really made a difference in my life. So hopefully you found these four tips helpful. And I appreciate if you can leave a comment or leave a review and let me know what are your thoughts about these four strategies that I gave to you. If I can overcome chronic pain, I know that you can too.

And so again, I appreciate you listening to the Won Body Won Life podcast. If you can, please leave a review. Go ahead and follow and subscribe share this to your story. So that that way other people can be able to see this, hear this story and maybe can change their life as well. I'll see you in the next one.