As more and more people drive cars these days we also inevitably are seeing an increase in car accidents. Whiplash is a common injury and females are 2 times more at risk than males and they are also more likely to develop long term symptoms. It is not well known why this is the case but it is thought that males have stronger neck muscles than females which may help and also because women tend to sit slightly more forward in their seat. When sitting further forward the head travels further before it hits the headrest. Another interesting fact is that drivers tend to have more serious neck injuries than the passengers. This is thought to be because the passengers tend to sit back in more of a reclined position with their heads against the headrests.

Now I have mentioned the head rests a couple or times in regards to whiplash injury but lets take a closer look at these things that we tend to think of as luxury items. I guess it’s because of their names which make us think of them as nothing more than something to rest our heads against. However, they are so much more than that.

As I have mentioned in another article when a rear collision occurs the head is thrust backward and into extension of forces up to 12G. A head rest or better termed, head restraint is designed to reduce that rearward motion of the head greatly decreasing your chances of a whiplash injury. With rear end collisions being so common it’s perhaps one of the most important safety features you have in your car.

So what height should your head restraint be at? It should be at head height that means your center of your head should meet the center of the head restraint. You should check yours the next time you decide to go for a drive and spend the time to position it correctly. It’s too late after a crash occurs. A head restraint that is too low allows the head to propel back and OVER it. You also don’t want your head too far forward. It should be no more than 4 finger widths from the head restraint. If you can’t do this comfortably you may want to invest in a car head support for better protection against neck injuries. Research has shown you will decrease your chance of neck injury by 40% with a correctly positioned headrest.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told automakers the head restraints in their passenger vehicles will have to extend higher and fit closer to the backs of people’s heads. For the first time, the new standard addresses the back set. Head restraints will have to be within about 2 inches behind the head.

Also, if you know your going to get hit try to decrease your risk of injury.  If you have your head or body turned during a collision it can greatly increase your chances of a significant injury. Keep your eyes on the road and your head straight. If you know you’re going to get hit, then reduce the distance between your head and the head restraint  by moving your head back. The car neck pillow reduces the headrest distance and increases your level of safety.

Crashes involving whiplash neck injuries happen at lightning-fast speeds, but if you have time to prepare: Put your head and your neck all the way back so that you’re in contact with the seat back and the properly adjusted head restraint. Straight-arm the steering wheel and get a good grip. If you are stopped, put your foot on the brake as hard as you can. Look straight ahead, not in the rearview mirror – don’t have your head turned at all. Put your neck back slightly so your eyes are looking level up at about the top of the windshield. Scrunch your shoulders up toward your ears and then brace.

I hope you never have to be involved in a car collision but at the very least I hope this will help you if something does happen. Happy motoring!

As a general rule, whether you sleep on your side or your back, you want to make sure that your neck is not getting pushed forwards, backwards or sideways. It should be fairly level. If you are sleeping on your back you definitely do not want too many pillows that push your head into a forward position like we have seen in poor sitting postures. This is very common and is a common reason why people wake up with neck pain. I have talked at great length in many of my other articles about the importance of keeping your posture with your head on top of your shoulders, not out in front of them. You need to imagine that your head and shoulders should be like a golf ball sitting on a tee. Then your head sits on top of your spine which reduces the stress and strain on your neck muscles and ligaments enormously. The same goes for sleeping, just because you are now horizontal it does not mean that you can now have your head pushed forward again.

If you sleep on your back you want a pillow that keeps your head in a reasonably level position with your body. You don’t want your head sinking backwards into the pillow nor do you want it pushed forwards.

If you lay on your side to sleep you don’t want your head sinking too far into the pillow nor getting pushed up. If you are lying on your side you want the feeling that your head is pretty much in a neutral position as opposed to being bent to the left or right. Imagine if you were told to stand or sit with your head to one side for 8 hours, by the end of the day it would feel very sore wouldn’t it. This is what is happening if your head is kept in poor position all night from a bad pillow or wrong pillow.

When it comes to the question of whether you should sleep on your stomachs I want you to do this little experiment. Do it carefully though. I want you to turn your head to one side as far as you can and now tilt it backward a little. Now imagine if I pushed your head a little further around and a little further backwards and you had to keep that position for an hour or so and then we would do the same on the other side and continue this for eight or so hours. This is the position you have when you are on your stomachs with the pressure of the mattress or pillows pushing your head further. Your head is fully rotated and pushed backwards. If its not comfortable to do standing up its definitely not going to be comfortable for your neck lying down either.

Furthermore, your discs swell up overnight as they fill with fluid which puts even more intra discal pressure on the spine and its surrounding ligaments adding even more stress. Therefore, make sure that you have a good pillow and i have written which pillows are good for your necks in a previous article. As far as sleeping on your stomachs goes, this is most definitely not healthy for your necks!

There are many forms of neck surgery that are performed these days and as always neck surgery should be considered a last resort. Once you read what is involved in each of the operations and the complications that may occur I hope you will make a concerted effort to use the advice I have written about to keep your necks and their discs in good health. You just don’t want to be going down the surgical road if you can help it. And you can normally help it.

If surgery is recommended it’s generally for these reasons

o To decrease the pressure from nerve roots caused by a herniated disc or bone spur

o To stop the movement between two vertebrae or a spinal segment such as in severe degenerative disc disease

o And to remove pressure from the spinal cord as in the cases of cervical myelopathy and spinal stenosis

As usual you should become empowered with as much information as you can when it comes to someone using a scalpel on you so I have written this article to give you an overview of the various types of surgeries and the problems that can arise.

You could have to have decompression surgery or fusion surgery. Many times these two operations are performed together because the decompression surgery can make the area unstable thus a fusion is performed as well. Depending on your type of problem the surgeon may decide to do the operation by entering the front of the neck or by entering from the back of the neck.

At times the surgeons use bone grafts which can either by taken from your hip when they do the surgery of they can get bone grafts from bone banks.

The anterior spinal fusion is much more common and they may remove the disc and place bone in between the vertebrae where the disc was. Then the vertebrae and the new bone graft fuse together over time creating a spinal fusion.

The posterior spinal fusion is where they enter from the back of the neck and the bone is placed on the back side of the vertebrae. This type of surgery is rarely done and most commonly only for fractures of the spine.

You may also have plates and screws placed in your neck to hold the area still so that the bones can fuse together.

A discectomy is used very commonly these days and this is where they remove the disc. They remove the disc that is impinging on the nerve root to relieve the pressure. Here they make a cut beside your windpipe and move the muscles out of the way to get to the vertebrae. Then they get an x-ray done to find out which disc is the problematic one and remove it all the way back to the spinal column. If there are any bone spurs on the vertebrae they will remove those as well. Of course, extra special care is needed not to damage the spinal cord. Then generally they will fuse the vertebrae as mentioned above.

You may have been recommended to have a laminectomy. This will normally be give if your diagnosis is from spinal stenosis. They need to make the spinal canal larger and remove any bone spurs that may be pressing on the nerves. Just as is the case with discectomy meaning ‘removal of the disc’, laminectomy means ‘removal of the lamina’. However, surgeons don’t tend to do complete laminectomies if they can help it because the spine tends to tilt forwards and can also cause other problems like facet joint instabilities further down the track. Another preferred option, is to cut only one side of the lamina and bend it open allowing more space for the spinal cord and spinal nerves.

There is another way to help people with spinal stenosis ad myelopathies and that is to remove the front of the spinal canal. (The lamina is the rear part of the spine). What they may do here is remove the large part of several vertebrae including the discs in between, then they fill it with bone again, surgically hold it together with plates and screws and you then will have an apparatus to keep you from moving your neck so that the bones can fuse. This is called a corpectomy.

The complications

Now if all that isn’t scary enough, what then are the complications? After all, surgery is invasive and let’s face it, things can go wrong. I want to stress once again that this should be your last resort because apart from the complications, there is no guarantee that you are going to be pain free after the operations.

You need to speak at length with your surgeon so that you are well aware of the problems that can arise because when they do occur they generally can be serious.

First of all, as aforesaid, you may have the surgery and still have the pain. This may mean back on the operating table again for more surgery.

As with any operation you need anesthesia and this in itself poses risks. You will probably be put under general anesthesia (which means being put to sleep) and there are an array of complications that can occur including dying! This is a complication you don’t want.

There is the risk of infection. As with any surgery when you open someone up you have the risk of having them become infected. If your bone becomes infected you may need more operations for them to drain it.

You have the risk of having your blood vessels damaged because they have to work very closely to your blood vessels and arteries that travel through your neck and into your brain. The carotid and jugular are right next to where they work. It is possible to do damage to these. It’s not likely that this will happen but its worth knowing that it’s a possibility.

You could have nerve damage. The nerves to your vocal cords are also close by and they could become damaged which could lead to your voice being hoarse although it will normally recover unless it is too badly damaged.

There is the risk of having spinal cord damage because they have to work so closely to it although again it is highly unlikely but a possibility.

One of the complications that can happen more commonly is that the graft displaces and then you may need another operation to replace it.

And finally there is the problem of non-union. This is where your fusion doesn’t fuse. If you have no pain the surgeon may just leave it but if the fusion hasn’t occurred and you are in pain he may want you to have a second operation.

So you see that there are many possible complications when it comes to neck surgery just like any other surgical procedure. Some of these above are extremely unlikely to happen but its better that you know before you have the surgery so that you can make a sound and knowledgeable decision based on all the factors.

If you are slouching your thoracic spine is hunched forwards, your neck is in a protracted position (head forward position) and then this leads to muscle imbalances and pain. In short, your chest muscles become too tight as do your frontal neck muscles and the opposing muscles become too long and weak. This leads to your shoulder blades rounding around your rib cage getting further away from each other at the spine. If you can imagine that the distance between your two shoulder blades should be about three inches apart from each other, well they literally drift apart making that space further as you keep hunching forwards at your computers, steering wheels, eating your breakfast etc.

What’s the problem with having my shoulder blades drifting apart?

So now you have your shoulder blades getting further away from each other which means the muscles that should hold them in their place are getting lengthened and weaker and the muscles in front of your chest are getting shorter and tighter (the opposing muscles). This is where things get messy for your shoulders. For a moment let’s forget about the problems slouching does to your muscles, ligaments and discs in your lower back and necks and let’s just keep focused on your shoulders themselves. If your back is now rounded making your chest too tight this also pulls your shoulder inwards. They are now rotated too far inwards(internally)! Now you are looking at a head on collision with your humerous (arm bone) mashing your rotator cuff tendons.

A quick test to see if your shoulders are rotated inwards

A very easy way to check is to stand with your arms at your sides. Now look down at your thumbs. Do they point forwards or point inwards at each other? They should be pointing towards the front. If they are pointing more towards each other, or worse, you are looking at the backs of your hands when standing there and your thumbs point sideways towards your midline, your shoulders are too tight and rotated inwards.

What to do to help your internally rotated shoulders

So now you know that your shoulders are inwardly (internally) rotated which means your chest muscles are too tight which means that your shoulder blades will more than likely have been pulled too far apart which means problems for your shoulders! At least 90% of shoulder problems will have problems with the shoulder blades, they are vital for good shoulder mechanics. So to help this problem we need to stretch the tight muscles and strengthen the weakened ones to get good balance again.

You need to start stretching out your chest muscles, both pectoralis major and minor and strengthening your middle back and shoulder external rotators. It makes sense really doesn’t it? Your shoulders are too far internally rotated which means that the internal rotators are too tight and shortened leaving your external rotators too long and weakened.

Therefore, stretch your pec. muscles and do the ‘I’ve got no money’ exercise.

The ‘I’ve got no money’ exercise

Here is a great exercise to strengthen the middle back and external rotators of the shoulder to get those shoulders working better again.

Stand upright with your arms by your sides and now bend your elbows with your palms face up as if you were about to carry a large tray. Have the insides of your elbows locked against your ribs. Stand tall and retract and depress your shoulder blades. In other words, before you start the exercise you want to contact your shoulder blades ‘down and back’. A nice way to think of this is imagine that you have a pencil between your shoulder blades that you want to keep in place with your shoulder blades. Make sure you are not shrugging your shoulder blades though! The motion is ‘down and back’ not ‘lifting up and back’. Now that you have put your shoulder blades in good position you start by rotating your hands away from each other to the sides but keep your elbows on your ribcage! Then return to where your palms are back in front of you again as if you are holding a tray.

Do this 6-8 times 3-4 times a day. Remember that once you have stretched your chest muscles and done this exercise you should then attempt to sit and stand in good posture throughout your day in everything that you do. Three minutes of exercises a day will do little to help you if you spend 10 hours a day of slouching at the computer!

If you are waking up in the morning with a stiff neck you can pretty much bet it’s your pillow that’s at fault. There are a multitude of pillows on the market and you could lose sleep just thinking about which one to buy.

One of the most important things to think about is whether the pillow that you currently are using is the correct height for you. This is the key to having a pain free neck at night time and of course, when you wake up. Your neck needs to be well supported and in a neutral position when you are sleeping.

So the first question you need to ask yourself is whether you sleep on your side, back or turn a lot. These will impact the height you are going to need for your pillow.

Having your neck in a neutral position means that your head is neither pushed forwards, backwards or hangs sideways. If you are laying on your back you head should be nicely level. On of the problems with the foam pillows are that they can be too stiff and your head doesn’t sink into them which leaves your head thrust forward. This is a surefire way to get a stiff neck and compress the upper cervical vertebrae. Also if you use a feather pillow your head can end up sinking too far into it which puts your head into extension and aggravates your joints again. The same thing happens if you are lying on your side so for this reason I don’t recommend either of these pillows. However, having said that, it may be possible to but a foam pillow that is not too thick and supports your head in a neutral position none the less.

Find that the contour pillows are by far the best. It’s worth spending the extra money on these types of pillows simply because they are extremely good and help the vast majority of neck pain sufferers. You can also see these studies if you put ‘memory foam pillows studies’ into Google and you will find the research done.

Another cheap way to see if a contour pillow will help is to use your pillow and roll up a towel to the thickness of about one and a half to two inches thick and place it under your neck for support. This will give your neck the needed support and if you have the level correct, it will also have your neck placed in a neutral position. You have pretty much made yourself a cheap version of a contour pillow and it is a good way to feel the extra support that this type of pillow gives.

If you are still having pain when you wake up you may need to address other factors that may be aggravating your neck. The most common reason for neck pain and neck related headaches are poor posture. If you sit in a slouched position at your computer for hours on end this will most definitely aggravate your neck. It is the most common cause!

Cortisone can be a ‘magic pill’ for some people but be very careful.

I was speaking to a good friend of mine who was in a great deal of pain. I asked him what had happened and he told me that a rather small problem that he had had was now a big problem. He explained to me that he had had been suffering from pain in his Achilles tendon. The doctor didn’t seem to know why he had this pain so he recommended that he get a series of cortisone injections to ‘see how that went’. After the first one he felt a bit better, then the next he felt better again and a few days before he was scheduled for his third injection he felt ‘like someone hit him in the back of the calf’ and now he had severe bruising in and around his Achilles tendon and ankle and was no longer able to walk without the aid of crutches. The doctor took a look at him and couldn’t understand what had happened so sent him off to get some physiotherapy for his ankle. This is where he should have gone to in the first place

So what is wrong with this picture?

Why don’t we first take a look at cortisone injections themselves? They have been around since the 1950s and are used to decrease tissue inflammation so that the area can then heal. This is the theory. But why is the area inflamed? This is the number one priority-getting to the cause of the problem not just treating the symptoms. Let’s take a look at another example.

I will use and example of a new client who came to see me last week. This person was suffering from neck pain and had tried everything from prolotherapy to acupuncture to chiropractic to Rolfing. However, his pain still existed. The whole time he was speaking to me he was sitting in a slouched forward head posture. I could see by his posture that this was his major problem and would be our first area to look at. The thing about poor posture and particularly a forward head posture is that it affects the upper back, neck, shoulders, lower back and so on and so forth. A forward head posture has a huge knock-on effect throughout the rest of the body. In other words, many of your problems will be caused (and fixed) by addressing this first.

I knew by looking at him that his shoulders were also forward and internally rotated which will impinged the shoulder joint and set him up for shoulder problems. I asked him if he had had shoulder problems in the past and he said ‘oh sure, I have had 3 cortisone injections in the left shoulder and 2 in the right but they didn’t really work’.

Of course they ‘didn’t really work’ because the cortisone injections will never fix the cause of the problem which is known as ‘upper crossed syndrome’ or ’rounded shoulders’ or ‘shoulders that are too far forward and internally rotated which lessen the space in the shoulder joint and cause impingement or better put, constant mashing of the soft tissues.’ The cortisone may have had a temporary effect as it reduced the inflammation and impingement but the cause of the problem was never addressed (i.e. shoulders too far forward and internally rotated causing pain and inflammation) and therefore after a short while the pain returned.

The story doesn’t end there. Not only do cortisone injections hurt but they have a corrosive effect on the cartilage and soft tissues. This, I don’t need to tell you, is NOT GOOD!

This brings me back to my friend with the Achilles tendon problem.

The major cause of prolonged pain and dysfunction from injuries is from lack of appropriate rehabilitative exercises. If you have an injury you MUST do stretching and strengthening exercises as soon as possible. (After the initial 48 hour inflammatory phase).

So my friend has, in my opinion, been getting treatment in ‘backwards- forwards land.’ He has come to see the doctor and instead of getting treatment for it such as physical therapy, which means stretching and strengthening exercises and soft tissue/joint therapies he was given cortisone injections. Here was a person who needed to strengthen his tendon and stretch it out to recover it to full function but what he got instead was something that masked the problem. He should have been getting therapy to allow the fibers to knit into a strong and flexible repair so that he could regain his strength in the soft tissues. However, instead he was now walking and running around with a torn tendon but now he could apply more pressure through the tendon thanks to the analgesic properties of the cortisone. Now, he could walk harder and faster which enabled him to damage his tendon further. Every pain free step would enable him to tear those tiny fibers more and more until finally something had to give- and it did. His tendon, thanks to the deadening effects of the cortisone and the added benefits of the corrosive properties of the cortisone pushed his Achilles tendon past breaking point and it snapped. Where is my friend now? He is getting physiotherapy 3 times a week to try to heal the area which is now much worse than the original problem.

So my advice to you is this. Just because your doctor or therapist doesn’t know why you have pain is no reason to jump into a series of cortisone injections. They are not good for your body, they are a corticosteroid. There is no reason to start putting more chemicals into your body when you may not have to. Seek another opinion. More than that, make sure that the cause is being addressed not just the symptoms. Are your shoulders painful because of major muscular and structural imbalances? Can you stop your osteoarthritis getting worse simply by postural and structural modifications?

If a person has sciatica and back pain because they have disc bulges in their lower back and need surgery I would want to see first why they have disc bulges in the first place. Is it because they sit slouched at their desk all day and night? Is it because they lift things poorly? If this is the case, and they elect to have surgery and do not stop these bad habits, what is stopping the next weakest links above and below the fusion from doing the same thing? Nothing. If you have blown your L5-S1 disc because of these very reasons and then after surgery( all going well) you feel better but continue to sit, stand and lift poorly you will put these same forces on your discs AGAIN and the problems will still be there. You are still causing your discs to be pushed backwards, straining your ligaments and soft tissues. Likewise, a cortisone shot will not fix your back pain from bad lifting techniques if you continue to lift badly

Your neck is no different. You MUST remove the cause of your neck pain.

Have you suffered from a Whiplash injury and still have neck pain?

Here is some very good news.

It could be simply because of one very simple thing that you are doing that is causing your pain. Over the Past twenty years I have seen hundreds of people who have had whiplash injuries and they had pretty much given up all hope of removing their neck pain and suffering. However, after I showed them how to reduce the strains on their necks which would allow their necks to heal completely-their symptoms disappeared. That is, their neck pain that they had been suffering from for so long was no more. It is not a magic trick, as you will see; it’s just simple body mechanics.

I won’t bore you with the basic facts in regards to a whiplash injury because if you have it I am sure you have read volumes on the internet about ‘acceleration-decceleration’injuries. Of course, the most common reason people have whiplash injuries is from car accidents and the forces generated can be as much as 15 G forces through the neck. This amount of force can damage the capsules, ligaments and other soft tissues and even the vertebrae and discs. Then after time the neck should heal. However, many people put enormous forces on their necks all day every day which causes their neck pain. Remember, over 80% of neck pain is postural. I put that estimate at a very conservative level because many people with neck pain who have been diagnosed with pain from whiplash or arthritis can still have pain from their posture, not their arthritis!

Let me explain. If you have arthritis or a whiplash injury that is now chronic and you continue to sit with poor posture, namely the ‘forward head posture’ how will you ever know if your whiplash or arthritis pain is coming from your whiplash or arthritis? If over 80% of people have neck pain from their posture( look around your office or workplace, bus stops, your home and nearly everyone who uses a computer and you will see people who are slouching with their heads in a forward head posture.) it is endemic in our society and is getting worse! Now with teenagers sending text messages all day and when they are not doing that they tend to be slumped over their laptops for hours on end the problem in the next ten years will escalate enormously. A year ago in December in the United States, Americans sent 48 billion text messages- in the month of December alone! Last December, it increased to 110 billion. That means a lot of happy telecom companies, physical therapists, massage therapists etc and a lot of unhappy people with neck pain.

The mayo clinic state that the forward head posture leads to long term muscle strain, disc herniations and pinched nerves. So here you are with an already injured neck and injuring it further, or at the very least- not allowing it to heal- because you are constantly straining the soft and hard tissues.

A forward head posture is what produces over 80% of neck pain. It is THE cause. Don’t believe me? Go back to Google and check out the major cause if neck pain and you will see that it is postural. What does postural mean? A forward head posture. So, if you spend most of your day sitting and standing like this, how will you ever know if your pain is simply coming from your posture? You won’t until you fix it. You must fix the cause to remove the symptom-pain.

This is how I have helped hundreds of people who felt that they had to live with their pain forever. People with arthritis who were simply sitting poorly and compressing their joint capsules and facet joints became pain free almost instantly. People with whiplash injuries who addressed their posture day in and day out saw their pain subside and leave them permanently.

As I said, this is not a magic trick or some ‘new fabulous wonder technique’. It is basic mechanics. This is the exact reason why millions of people suffer from neck pain daily. This is the exact reason why the mayo clinic state that it leads to ‘long term muscle strains, disc herniations and pinched nerves’ and the exact reason why you too can become pain free.

If you suffer from neck pain or perhaps even pinched nerves I suggest that you read this.

A very common scenario:

You spend all day slouched in front of a computer, slouched watching television, sew, write, eat and drink with poor posture and even drive with your head protracted forwards. You also ‘mysteriously’ suffer from neck pain. You are completely unaware that this ‘forward head posture’ not only causes neck pain, (and is in fact the major cause of neck pain) but also causes great strains on your discs. Then one day your disc finally can no longer resist the tremendous forces being applied by your prolonged poor posture, gives way and herniates(bulges) and then presses on a nerve. This then causes you immense pain and or weakness and or numbness in your arm and or hand.

You go to a surgeon and he tells you to take some muscle relaxants and some painkillers. You do this and it gives you some temporary relief however you continue to slouch at your computer, whilst driving your car and when you read your favorite book in bed at night. Unbeknownst to you, the discs are still continually being forced backwards towards the nerve again. It is only the anti-inflammatory effects of the drugs that you are taking that is keeping the nerve from being pinched severely once again.

After your ten day course of drugs from the surgeon you feel a bit better (if you’re lucky) but another week goes by and your problem comes back again. Why? because you continued to slouch and sit and stand with a forward head posture and thus continued to exacerbate your problem. You never once removed the cause of your problem. Just like having a sore thumb from hitting it with a brick, its not until you stop hitting your thumb with the brick and remove the cause of your pain will you be pain free and allow the area to heal.

However, you are not told that the forward head posture is the cause of your disc protrusions and pinched nerve. You are scheduled for surgery because the numbness has become worse and the pain is now also much worse. Your sleep is also badly affected. You buy pillows to help your neck but of course it is nothing more than a bandaid because the majority of damage is being done during the day because of your poor posture. You spend thousands of dollars on chiropractic, massage and acupuncture treatments and never get anything more than temporary relief at best. Why? The cause has still not been addressed.

You finally commit to surgery. However, even after surgery you have not been told that the forward head posture is the main cause of neck pain. You, if you are lucky, are told that you should sit at your computer in good posture but it is nothing you really spend much time thinking about. After all, you have just had your neck fixed from the surgeon right? (At this point, lets assume that the operation was successful-meaning you are not paralysed and/or the pain is not worse or the same as it was before).

You have your surgery, you do your rehab and then go about your daily life again. The area where you had your problem is OK now( as such) because it is fixed by titanium. However, you go back to your slouching at the computer again, spending long hours reading and writing your books, sewing, driving, and doing crosswords all with a forward head posture once again. Now, the strains are being put back onto your neck once again. This time its on the areas above and below your vertebrae that were operated on. Are you headed on exactly the same course as you were before?

Absolutely! Your neck pain, disc bulges and pinched nerves due to the forward head posture are completely avoidable.