Doctor let’s get into a few more tips again about how we can take care of our necks on a daily basis hopefully maybe avoid chronic neck pain but if we are experiencing it again what can we do to just try to alleviate some of these issues on our own you know before maybe having to go to the doctors so the first thing and I just can’t say it enough is to stop doing whatever you’re doing that’s causing the pain now that’s not always easy we were just talking about job related issues and so that can sometimes be a challenge because we all have to pay the bills but even within your job there are often ways if you really start thinking about it paying attention to and being mindful of when the neck is starting to hurt what’s making it worse what kind of movements where we can maybe adjust things just a little bit to try and get some of that pressure off the neck okay and aside from resting hopefully being able to stop that activity that’s causing the aggravation what is the difference between ice versus heat what would you tell people if they want to put something comforting on their neck which it’s something that I hear about all the time it’s one of the top questions that people ask me in my office and we’re talking about neck or low back pain the easy answer is whichever one makes you feel better right but when we’re talking about muscle spasms as it turns out I think that heat typically works better because what we’re trying to do is loosen up that muscle and if you apply heat to the muscle that’s gonna relax it in a way that ice won’t ice however we’ll help with things like inflammation