Customer Reviews

Treat Your Own Neck

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I had neck pain along with tingling radiating down my arm to my index finger. Having had extensive experience with clients who needed physical therapy, I was fairly certain I had a cervical disk bulge/pinched nerve. I knew the routine with orthos and physical therapists and wanted to avoid spending both the time on office visits and the money, if at all possible. I stopped my usual exercise routines to give myself time to heal, took anti-inflammatories for a couple of weeks, bought this book and followed it religiously, and purchased an arc4life cervical traction pillow. In a matter of a few weeks, the problem was completely resolved and has not returned several months later. I have absolutely no pain and no restriction of movement. It is vital that you not do more harm than good by overdoing and/or improperly doing the exercises. Of course, if I hadn't seen improvement, I would have consulted a doctor. (BTW, I still sleep on the pillow and highly recommend it. It gets you past that unhappy routine of backsliding in the healing process due to sleeping wrong on the injury. It can be uncomfortable at first, so ease into using it as recommended. It literally provides light traction to the cervical spine when lying on your back and, if you move to the proper location on the pillow, provides excellent support while sleeping on either side.)

This book totally saved my life. I picked it up on the way to a Christmas craft fair I was working...and during the afternoon I did a few of the exercizes along with some in Treat Your Own Back. The relief was instant. I couldn't believe it! The only thing about these books is that Robin McKenzie has updated his method and combined both books into "7-Steps to a Pain Free Life: How to Rapidly Relieve Back and Neck Pain" by Craig Kubey and Robin McKenzie. So...get the updated version instead!

After several years of increasingly frequent bouts with neck and upper back pain, I finally went to a physical therapist to find some relief. During the few weeks she treated me, she loaned me a copy of this book and told me to practice the exercises in it. The exercises were *so* successful in relieving my pain that I bought my own copy of the book and have made them a regular part of my daily routine. They have proven themselves time and time again to be a preventative measure against recurring pain. I can't tell you how thankful I am to have found this book!

A couple of the exercises in this book were recommended to me by a chiropractor. It took a few days to feel any improvement, but I then found myself going for days without any headaches. That may not sound like much, but I'd been having chiropractic adjustments every single week like clockwork for years. It's been three months since I bought this book, and I'm now able to go three weeks or more between adjustments. That's the first real improvement I've ever gotten. Even more important to me, I only have headaches about once a week, whereas they had become to seem a permanent fixture in my life before I started doing McKenzie's stretching exercises a couple of times a day. That's a lot of benefit from a book that costs 1/3 the cost of a single adjustment.

I occasionally have severe neck pain that leads to debilitating headaches, and finally bought this book to stop the pain (I already own McKenzie's "Treat Your Own Back"). The exercises in this book were great, but the real value of the book was learning how to keep my head in correct posture and learning how to shape my pillow to stop the neck pain from sleeping. This is an excellent book, and it's really helped me stop my neck pain from reoccurring. I highly recommend it to everyone suffering from neck pain.

I'm a software developer and sit in front of a computer at least 8-10 hours per day. Literally for the last decade I have not had a day without some kind of pain, discomfort, or stiffness in my neck. I've just grown accustomed to the pain. After reading this short but sweet book (in less than 1/2 hour) and performing the simple excercises at least a few times per day, my neck feels 500% better. It's almost a miracle. If you have neck troubles, buy this book!

I formerly had a copy of this book, as well as another by the same author. I loaned each of them to persons with neck & back problems, and never got them back! I think it was because they are so helpful to people with neck and back pain. I recommend this book without reservation, merely cautioning the reader to read it completely before starting the recommended excercises.

I completely agree with the findings of the other 2 people who tried the exercises in this book. I had a chronic shoulder pain caused by a trapped nerve in my neck. My physical therapist correctly diagnosed it and leant me a copy of this book. After 3 months of seeing 3 different doctors (and getting advice ranging from 'it's a muscle spasm, don't worry it will be gone in a week' to 'it's a repetitive motion injury. Get used to it, it will be around for months') I tried the exercises in this book and was completely recovered in 7 days. If this book were a pill it would be hailed as the greatest break through in neck pain ever made. But it's just a book and most people prefer pills...

I'm suffering from recently developed, sudden onset neck arthritis. When I suddenly started noticing pain and stiffness in my neck, I saw my doctor, who recommended physical therapy, and I also looked for relief on the Internet. Through the Internet, I discovered this favorably reviewed book by Robin Mckenzie. Through my physical therapist, I discovered that my problem was neck arthritis, which is not uncommon in men of my age. Both my physical therapist and Mckenzie emphasize the importance of maintaining good posture for relieving pain and preventing further damage.

When I showed my physical therapist Mckenzie's book, he told me he had read it, that he is a great fan of Mckenzie's, but that the exercises in the book are appropriate for people with herniated cervical discs, not with neck arthritis. Indeed, before I had shown the book to my therapist, I had found that Mckenzie's exercise #2 (or the related exercise while lying on a bed) was very painful. In contrast, exercise #1, which is similar to an exercise my therapist had recommended, brought relief.

The bottom line is that I now recommend this brief, well-written book to everyone for its encouragement of good posture. I suspect that people suffering from herniated cervical discs will obtain great relief from the recommended exercises, but I warn people suffering from neck arthritis to use the exercises only with extreme caution. For neck arthritis, the recommendations of a good physical therapist are more appropriate.

This book is an easy read, with easy to follow pictures of how to do the exercises, some of which are so simple that I can do them in my car while sitting at a stoplight. The book shows how to do about 5 exercises that not only relieve neck pain - they ward off future occurences of it. Also helpful was the photos of postures to avoid while sitting, driving, and sleeping - I didn't know how important that was. I also recommend "Treat Your Own Back", also by Robin A. McKenzie.