Neck pain is common, and often shows up alongside shoulder pain, headaches, or stiffness at the base of the skull. Whether your pain is on the left or right side, appeared after sleeping wrong, or you woke up with a stiff neck and can’t turn your head, the specialists at Mountain View Pain Center can help. If your neck pain shoots into your shoulder or arm, it may be cervical radiculopathy, a pinched nerve in the neck we treat every day.
Our Pain Management providers, physical therapists, and chiropractors work together to find the cause and build a plan designed specifically for you. If your neck pain began after a collision, start with our car accident injury treatment.
Severe neck pain with fever, trauma, progressive weakness, severe headache, or dizziness requires immediate medical attention.
To recommend the right treatment, we start by identifying what’s driving your symptoms. Your visit may include a review of your history and daily activities, range-of-motion and movement testing, and assessment of muscles and joints. If symptoms include radiating pain, numbness, or tingling, we may also perform a basic neurologic screen. We also check for red flags to determine whether imaging or referral is appropriate.
At Mountain View Pain Center, our multidisciplinary team combines evidence-based care to relieve pain and restore motion:
Targeted diagnostic injections and image-guided procedures when appropriate to reduce inflammation and calm irritated nerves or joints.
Upper back and shoulder blade strengthening, postural retraining, and corrective exercises.
Gentle spinal adjustments and joint mobilization to improve neck and upper-back mobility and reduce pressure on irritated joints. What Chiropractic care for neck pain involves, and when it is not the first step.
Helps relax tight muscles, improve circulation, and calm chronic neck and upper-back tension.
Pain at the base of the neck, left- or right-sided neck pain, or neck and shoulder pain on one side can stem from muscles, joints, or nerves. Our specialists identify the true cause and create a plan that relieves pain and strengthens support muscles for long-term relief. When the pain sits high at the base of the skull and travels up the back of the head, it may be occipital neuralgia, not ordinary neck strain, a distinction worth making, because it responds to different treatment. If your neck pain began after a collision, see our guidance on whiplash treatment.
The neck refers pain far more than it hurts locally, which is why so many people arrive convinced the problem is somewhere else. The upper segments, just below the skull, send pain up over the back of the head and behind the eye. That is the cervicogenic headache pattern, and it is regularly mistaken for migraine.
The middle segments refer across the top of the shoulder and into the shoulder blade. Pain that sits between the spine and the inner edge of the shoulder blade, and that no amount of rubbing the spot ever fixes, is usually generated several inches away in the neck. The lower segments send pain down the arm, and the further down the arm it travels, the more likely it is that a nerve root rather than a joint or a muscle is involved.
That map is the practical reason we examine the neck on shoulder patients, headache patients and arm patients alike. Where you feel something and where it is coming from are often not the same place.
A stiff, aching neck that is worse at the end of a desk day, better when you move, and reluctant when you first turn to check a blind spot is the most common picture by a wide margin. It is usually mechanical, it responds well to treatment, and imaging rarely adds anything.
A sharp catch that appears at one point in the range and stops you turning any further is a different sensation and usually a joint one. A sudden onset on waking, with the neck locked to one side, alarms people more than it should. It is generally a short, self-limiting episode even though it feels dramatic.
The description that changes the workup is electrical. Burning or shooting pain down one arm, pins and needles in specific fingers, or a heaviness and weakness in the hand suggests a nerve root is being irritated where it exits the neck. Pain that is worse when you look up or tilt toward the sore side, and eases when you rest that hand on your head, points the same way.
Most episodes of neck pain settle substantially within a few weeks. The ones that do not tend to share a pattern: the original flare quietened but never fully cleared, the range never came all the way back, and the neck now flares reliably in response to things that used to be unremarkable: a long drive, a bad night's sleep, a heavy week at a desk.
By that stage the problem is rarely just the original tissue. The deep stabilizing muscles at the front of the neck lose their endurance quickly when a neck is guarded, the larger surface muscles take over and fatigue, and the shoulder blades stop supporting the neck the way they should. That combination is why a neck can hurt for a year with nothing dramatic on a scan.
It is also why the treatment for a persistent neck looks like graded loading and endurance work instead of more of whatever gave short-lived relief early on.
Neck pain after significant trauma (a fall, a collision, a blow to the head) should be assessed before anything is done to the neck. Seek emergency care for neck pain with fever and a stiff neck you cannot bend forward, with a severe headache of sudden onset, or with confusion.
Get urgent assessment for weakness or clumsiness in the hands, a change in handwriting or difficulty with buttons, unsteadiness on the feet, or any change in bowel or bladder control alongside neck symptoms, that combination suggests pressure on the spinal cord itself, not a nerve root, and it is time-sensitive. Progressive weakness in one arm warrants prompt evaluation, not watchful waiting, as does neck pain with unexplained weight loss or night sweats.
Ordinary mechanical neck pain does not do these things.
No referral is needed for Chiropractic, Physical Therapy, Acupuncture or Pain Management, and our goal is to get you in within the same week.
The examination covers range of movement in every direction, the individual segments of the neck, the strength and reflexes of the arms, and how your shoulder blades behave, because a neck is only as well supported as the structures below it. If there is any arm involvement we map exactly which fingers and which movements are affected, since that identifies the level more precisely than a scan does. Imaging is ordered when it would change the plan; age-related changes are present on the scans of most adults with no symptoms at all.
Chiropractic here uses Diversified, drop-table and Activator techniques, with spinal decompression and dry needling available as modalities and a decompression table at every clinic. Bring a photo ID and your insurance card, any previous imaging, and a sense of what your working day physically looks like, that last one shapes the plan more than people expect. Where an interventional step is appropriate it is performed in office at Northglenn, north Colorado Springs, Mesa and Glendale. Spine injections are also performed at Lowry on specific days.
Every Mountain View Pain Center clinic has Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic care and Acupuncture in the same building, so if neck pain needs more than one kind of care, you do not get handed off to another practice.
Colorado: Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Lakewood, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Lone Tree, Northglenn, Lafayette, Greeley, Fort Collins.
Arizona: Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Peoria.
No referral is needed in either state. Find your nearest clinic on the full clinic map, or call Colorado (720) 749-5599 or Arizona (602) 325-2024.
Mild strains may resolve in days, but chronic or recurrent pain requires a structured rehabilitation plan.
A pillow that supports the neck in a neutral position: memory-foam or orthopedic “cervical” pillows often work well.
Yes. Cervicogenic headaches often start in the neck and radiate to the back of the head or behind the eyes. Treating the neck usually reduces headache frequency and intensity.
When it is not improving after a couple of weeks, when it travels into an arm, when there is numbness or weakness, or when it followed a collision. Any of those is worth an appointment this week, not next month.
Frequently. The nerves supplying the upper neck joints share a pathway with those supplying the scalp and the area behind the eye, which is why a neck problem is felt in the head.
Neither. You can book directly, and whether imaging is needed is one of the things the examination decides.
Chiropractic care to restore the motion that has been lost, Physical Therapy to rebuild the deep neck muscles, and Acupuncture where it helps. Where the pain travels into an arm and does not settle, the Pain Management physicians assess whether an interventional step is appropriate.
Most major commercial plans are accepted in both states, and Medicare Advantage is accepted on most plans in both states. Benefits are checked before the first visit.
The same care, written for the metro you are in: neck pain treatment in Denver, neck pain treatment in Colorado Springs, or neck pain treatment in Phoenix.
Each page names the clinics in that metro, what the first visit involves, and where an interventional step would be performed if one is needed.
Neck Pain is treated at every Mountain View Pain Center clinic in Colorado and Arizona. See the full clinic map, Colorado or Arizona.
