Physiotherapists in Potters Bar treat many different conditions including the issues profiled below.

Exercise for Neck Pain

Exercise is a good choice to manage neck pain and is a safe way to treat the neck. Simple neck exercises are useful and help reduce pain and maintain the ranges of motion of the joints. It is important to stretch out the muscles, joints and other structures in the neck which might be tight and stiff. A degree of discomfort and soreness is to be expected after beginning to exercise and this should not be a cause of concern. Concentration on repeating the movements until full range is achieved is the key and with this a reduction in pain is likely.

No particular exercise suits everybody.s neck problems so a bit of experimentation is often necessary to find the right combination for any individual. Neck exercises should be performed slowly and steadily to get the right result as quick movements may cause injury or aggravate the pain. All exercises should be performed to the end of the range of movement available with a steady push to go a bit further held for a few seconds each time. The neck itself is an obvious choice for exercises but the shoulder and the shoulder girdle are involved in the function of the area and should also be included.

Degeneration of Intervertebral Discs

The terms degeneration and ageing when applied to intervertebral discs are not exactly the same thing, as degeneration implies damaging changes in disc structure while ageing changes may be incidental. However, degeneration is a lot more common in older rather than younger discs. Degeneration does involve things which ageing does not, such as larger structural changes in the annulus in the endplates. This structural change starts to occur in a person.s twenties and reaches its maximum in middle age. Because disc degeneration occurs more commonly in men and in the lower lumbar spine it is assumed to be related to mechanical stresses.

Changes which occur in the discs are tears in the annular fibres of various patterns, buckling of the inner annular fibres inwards towards the disc centre, greater bulging of the outer disc walls, loss of disc height, defects in the endplates which can include these bulging up into the vertebral body. Blood vessels and nerves can grow inwards along the annular tears as they are no longer opposed by the internal disc pressure. Degeneration may disrupt the disc.s ability to distribute the compression stresses evenly, leading to high levels of stress being applied to areas which are not designed to cope with this.