Hi, I'm Natalie here with Veritas Health, and I'm going to give you guys some information on using heat therapy for neck pain.
A question I get a lot as a physical therapist is should I use heat on my neck and how should I use it? As a general rule of thumb, if you're experiencing acute neck pain or new onset neck pain, avoid using heat for the first 72 hours. This is when there's active inflammation, and during this time, you may be better off using some ice. If this is some chronic neck pain, or nothing new to you, or just a flare up of some typical neck pain, then it's appropriate to start using heat right away.
There are several options you can use as a heating pad, which I'll show you. The first is an adhesive pad which you can get at your drugstore. These are helpful for getting small areas of your neck and can be just really convenient as they move with you throughout the day. You can also use a gel pad which you can warm up in the microwave. These are helpful because they really conform well to different parts of your neck. A final option is using an electric heating pad. These are helpful for large areas, and they are also helpful because they have a timer, which you can use to not exceed the time limit.
When using heat therapy, I recommend starting with about ten minutes, but you can work your way up to about 30 minutes as long as you're not having any skin irritation or signs of burning. It's important to not fall asleep while using these, as then it can stay on you too long and damage your skin.
Also, if you're using any topical creams, even like a prescription anti-inflammatory or something like Icy Hot, I would recommend not putting heat therapy directly on top of that, as that can cause some chemical irritation.
To learn more about heat therapy for neck pain, please visit us at Spine-health.com and be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos like this one. Thanks for watching!
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