Cervical vertigo: try cervical muscle training exercises

  ”Dizziness!” This is a symptom that many patients express to their physicians. In fact, vertigo is a subjective feeling of the patient and is one of the most common clinical syndromes in outpatient emergency departments. The latest clinical survey statistics show that the incidence of vertigo is about 8%, and the incidence is gradually increasing with the aging of the population. According to the survey, the incidence of vertigo in elderly people over 65 years old is 57% for women and 39% for men. Due to the increasing pressure of people’s life and work, the percentage of young people suffering from vertigo is also increasing. However, the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of vertigo is difficult because there are relatively few objective signs during vertigo attacks. There are more than 80 diseases that have been clearly identified to cause vertigo, among which patients with cervical vertigo are more common.  Cervical vertigo is caused by cervical spondylosis and can be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, head and neck pain, tinnitus, visual disturbance, sweating, palpitations, shoulder and back pain, upper limb numbness, etc. Its manifestations can be in various combinations. Some studies have pointed out that 50% of patients with vertigo over 50 years of age have cervical vertigo.  Recurrent episodes of cervical vertigo are clearly related to sudden head rotation and occur mostly during neck movements, sometimes presenting varicose vertigo when sitting up or lying down. The episodes are usually brief, ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes, but there are cases of longer duration. Pain in the neck or posterior occipital region may occur in the morning. Some patients may have symptoms of cervical nerve root compression, i.e. numbness and weakness in the arms, and involuntary falling of objects held. More than half of the patients may have tinnitus, and 62%-84% of the patients have headache, mostly confined to the parieto-occipital region, often in the form of episodic throbbing pain. It is easy to attack or aggravate after exertion, and can be reduced by rest or external fixation treatment with a cervical brace.  Injury, degeneration and instability of the cervical spine are the causes Why is the incidence of the disease so high?  This is because the cervical spine is the part of the spine with the greatest flexion, extension, and rotation mobility. The cervical spine is surrounded by several groups of elastic and tough muscles and ligaments, which play a fixed and protective role for the cervical spine. The physiological characteristics and function of the cervical spine require both a high degree of flexibility and sufficient stability to enable it to protect important tissues such as the spinal cord, nerves and vertebral arteries, and to allow a wide range of physiological activities in three-dimensional space. Because the cervical support structures are much less stable than the thoracic, lumbar and sacral spine, and because the cervical spine has the greatest and most frequent mobility in daily work and life, it is prone to injury, degeneration and instability.  In addition, the cervical muscles and ligaments bear the brunt of various stresses in spinal trauma and are also susceptible to injury.  When acute cervical vertigo occurs, patients should try to stay in bed to avoid the onset of the disease. You can also wear a neck brace to prevent the onset of cervical vertigo, which is mainly caused by the stimulation of vertebral arteries, nerves and blood vessels by cervical instability. For the treatment of cervical vertigo, various medications conservative treatment and various types of surgical treatment are needed according to the patient’s condition and physical condition.  In addition, based on these physiological characteristics of the cervical spine and combined with a large number of clinical practices, we have created a set of easy-to-use cervical muscle training methods to improve the symptoms of cervical vertigo without injections or medications, combining 30 years of clinical practice. Patients can perform one set each day in the morning and evening, and the number of training sessions per set is unlimited, to the extent that the patient feels slightly tired in the neck.