As humans age, daily work, smartphones, and even pillows can seem to have it out for our necks. Bad posture, repetitive motions, or even just one wrong move involving this part of the body can trigger tenderness, tension, and pain. If you’re experiencing such sensations, you might say you have a knot in your neck. But is anything actually getting knotted up in there?
The short answer is no. “Muscles are never tied into knots,” said Ara Nazarian, who runs the musculoskeletal research lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Yet, “they can feel that way due to the accumulation of tight muscle fibers within a specific area.”Â
Nazarian, also a professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School, told Popular Science that when neck knots—or myofascial trigger points—occur, “a specific portion of the muscle contracts similarly.” In other words, what’s commonly called a knot is actually an area of contracted muscle fibers that can’t fully relax. This phenomenon, Nazarian explained, might feel like a bump, lump, or band beneath your skin.
If you’re suffering from a knot in your neck, you’re in good company. Almost everybody experiences sensitive trigger points at one point or another in their life. “Trigger points are present in 97% of individuals with chronic pain, and they are found in 100% of individuals experiencing neck pain,” Nazarian said. For most people, they’re impossible to completely avoid, but muscle knots are treatable and it’s possible to reduce how often they appear. Typically, the trick is in identifying the common causes and making some adjustments.
A variety of behaviors can foster muscle tension and lead to knots, including sitting for a long time, gazing downward at your laptop, tablet, or smartphone habitually, not drinking enough water, and falling asleep “in an awkward position,” said Nazarian. “Physical trauma, such as whiplash or a pulled muscle, heavy lifting, or…
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