How To Treat Neck Pain When Breathing

If you have ever experienced a car accident or are currently receiving treatment for workers comp injuries, you may find yourself having painful breathing experiences. Normally, you would expect just your muscles supporting your spine to ache when you bend or try to walk, but surprisingly enough, breathing can also be very painful. Painful breathing after a traumatizing event to your body requires proper assessment and treatment as soon as symptoms present themselves.

Because your vertebrae are directly connected with other skeletal structures, like your ribs, so much as a small sneeze will radiate sharp stabbing pain throughout your body. Let’s look at what causes this condition and how you can best recover from it.

Do You Have Signs of a Neck Injury?

While there are numerous causes for neck pain when breathing deep, many of the outward symptoms of an injury to the cervical spine region are similar. The biggest culprit of discomfort while breathing has a link to your musculoskeletal system and its soft tissues, muscles, and vertebrae. 

Pain related to neck injury could manifest in a variety of ways, like:

• Difficult or painful breathing
• Headaches
• The tightness and/or stiffness
• Muscle spasms
• Inflammation
• Tender to the touch
• Neck pain

When these more tender areas supporting the spine get injured, you may even experience sharp and shooting pain sensations when you so much as cough or sneeze. An experienced New York neck injury doctor can diagnose your symptoms and examine your neck to pinpoint the location of these uncomfortable conditions.

Treatment Options For Your Neck Pain Related Breathing Issue

If you have neck pain when breathing deeply, it’s important to take it seriously despite your workers comp injury not appearing to be the cause. All too often, conditions like herniated discs in the neck and spine get dismissed as whiplash or muscle strain, when in fact it’s much more serious.

Car accidents can bring on delayed symptoms that you don’t initially experience, and if there are multiple injuries involved, the pain may have been masked by other issues at first.  Don’t try to assume your discomfort is simply par for the course and get yourself checked out as soon as possible.

Depending on your diagnosis, your treatment options could include some of the following:

• Improving or adjusting your posture to relieve muscle fatigue and improve blood flow to the affected area
• Medication via prescription or over-the-counter to treat related inflammation that is causing your neck pain
• Taking slower breaths to relax the neck and other connected muscles which may have received injuries
• Physical therapy treatment to help alleviate undue stiffness and inflamed muscles, as well as possible pinched nerve conditions
• CT scans or X-rays to determine if you have any fractured vertebrae in your neck from your accident experience
• Supportive medical gear that will help to maintain a healthy posture and remove pressure on the affected area of your neck
• Checking for other medical causes

It’s important to remember that neck pain when breathing deep is not necessarily the result of only traumatic car accidents or workers compensation injuries. There is always a possibility that your experience might be related to an underlying health problem you didn’t know about until you got hurt. A New York pain doctor can help you figure out the source of this health condition and get you back onto the path to healing and living a normal life again.