What I Treat · Exeter
Neck pain treatment in Exeter
Whether it arrived overnight or crept in over months of desk work, neck pain responds well to the right combination of hands-on treatment and movement.
£75 · 45 minutes · includes your first treatment
Understanding It
From slept-funny to stuck-for-months
Necks are movement machines: seven vertebrae, dozens of joints and layers of muscle that keep your head balanced all day. When they get irritated, through a sudden movement, an awkward night, stress, or long hours in one position, the surrounding muscles guard, and a stiff, painful neck is the result.
Most neck pain is mechanical: it comes from joints and muscles rather than anything sinister, and it improves with the right treatment. Some necks also refer pain elsewhere, which is why headaches and shoulder-blade pain so often travel with it.
Common signs
- Stiffness turning the head, especially reversing the car or checking over a shoulder
- Aching that spreads to the shoulders or between the shoulder blades
- Headaches that start at the base of the skull
- Pain that builds through a working day at a screen
- Occasional pins and needles into the arm or hand
How Physiotherapy Helps
Restore movement first, then build resilience
Assessment identifies which joints and muscles are involved and, importantly, whether a nerve is irritated, which changes the plan. One patient's review on this site says it plainly: neck pain relieved in the first session, because the right structure was found and treated.
Hands-on treatment, mobilisation and soft-tissue work restore movement and ease pain. Then targeted exercises rebuild the neck and upper back's tolerance for your actual life: your desk hours, your training, your sleep position. That second half is what stops the six-monthly repeat visits.
While You Wait
What you can do today
Keep the neck moving little and often within comfort; gentle rotation beats holding it rigid. Heat on the muscles often eases guarding.
Check the obvious loads: screen height, a fresh pillow arrangement, and regular breaks from any fixed position, especially phone-scrolling with your chin on your chest.
Short-term pain relief from a pharmacist can be sensible to keep you moving; ask their advice.
Worth Knowing
When to get help
If your neck has been painful or stiff for more than a week or two, is causing regular headaches, or arm symptoms keep appearing, an assessment will find out why and what to do about it.
See a doctor promptly if neck pain follows a significant accident, comes with worsening arm weakness or clumsiness, dizziness, or you feel generally unwell with it.
Let's find out what's actually going on
A 45-minute assessment gets you a diagnosis in plain English, a clear plan, and your first treatment on the same day. No GP referral needed.