Call your spine specialist if you have neck pain that persists more than a few days or is severe and accompanied by other symptoms.

You need to know what's causing your neck pain because that impacts your treatment options. As you probably know, there are a lot of ways to experience neck pain.

Your head is a lot to carry around—it can weigh 8 pounds or more. Not only does your neck fully support all that weight, it enables you to nod your head, shake your head, and turn your head. No other part of your spine has the ability to move so much: 90° of forward motion, 90° of backward motion, 180° of side-to-side motion, and almost 120° of tilt to either shoulder.

During our lives, many of us will have neck pain, and most of us won't know exactly what caused it. In fact, neck pain can start from a whole range of causes. Maybe you slept funny and woke up with a crick that won't go away. You might've been rear-ended in your car and now you have whiplash. Perhaps you twisted it wrong one day in one of those high-intensity aerobic classes.