Many people think it is a muscle problem because they feel the spasm in their neck or back. Even though you feel the spams in you rneck or back, most of the time the muscles are the bodies secondary response to protect the spine and the nerves from being further injured. The Body is using the muscles to sort of cast the area of the spine so you can't move it in certain directions and further injure yourself.

I always recommend when in doubt rotate heat then ice. If the muscles are spasmed it is because the nerve is over irritated or inflamed, which is usually the case, adding heat can increase blood flow to the area and increase the inflammation thus increasing the spasms to further protect the area. If we reduce the inflammation with ice, the body will let the muscles relax because the need for protection is less.

If your engine light came on in your car because the water temperature got too hot and you pulled over and "took it easy" and the light went off because the temperature reduced, is the problem gone? If you had some slight chest pain and you "took it easy" and the pain went away is your heart condition gone?

The spine and nervous system is the most important system in your body.  The nervous system controls and regulates all other systems in your body.  If the nervous system is not working properly how can the systems the nervous system control work properly?

Health by definition is having all your parts and systems working at 100%.  The skull and spine house your brain and spinal cord and then between openings formed by the bones in your spine the nerves exit to every part of your body.  This is the connection of how your brain and nervous system finds out how everything in your body is doing and gets information back to areas to repair and get things functioning again.  When individual bones in your spine are not moving properly an irritation to nervous system can occur not allowing proper information to travel back and forth.  When enough irritation occurs at any one or more levels of the spine thats when the body creates pain and /or spasms so that you don’t continue to make the problem worse (protection).

You may ask how  do these bones in the spine start to move abnormally?  Let’s use an illustration of the car.  If we hit a pot hole, some speed bumps, railroad tracks, etc. and nothing breaks, there is a chance that have knocked the front end of the car out of alignment and cause some altered function to start to occur. In a similar way I call this the “pot holes” of life, falls off bikes, off swings, sports, car accidents, slips and falls, repetitive actions at work over many years, can cause misalignments and alteration of function or motion of segments in your spine.  

Take falls, sports or auto accidents, these traumas usually don’t break the spine because your spine is designed not to break and cause permanent damage to your spinal cord but are moveable bones that absorb the forces and alter position and function instead.Identify the function or motion faults and start a process to build normal function causing the spine and nervous system to work properly and that’s how you get back to health.