How I Started Developing a Head Tic...And Then Destroyed It

I just got back from getting my eyes examined. You see, last week I had pain in my right eye, and the nice people at UHS told me that everything looked fine, and that I shouldn't worry about it unless it gets worse. And then I started seeing a spot at night, so I figured that probably counted as getting worse and decided to have it looked at. And after a thorough examination, the doctor concluded that everything looked fine. And thus I conclude another chapter of my body randomly malfunctioning for no apparent reason (though to be fair, he did say it was probably just eigengrau, the stuff you see in darkness when your brain decides it doesn't want to just see blackness and starts making random neurons fire).

Which reminded of this one time my body malfunctioned, and I was actually able to solve the problem. So now it's time for me to share this glorious success story with you all.

Back in maybe January, I noticed that for the past month, about once a week, I would be minding my own business when suddenly my head would just twitch for no reason. I thought to myself, "How odd. I hope this doesn't get worse." But of course it did, and soon enough it progressed to once a day, then repeatedly throughout the day, and I thought to myself, "Great, another mild bodily woe not quite serious enough to actually complain about." However, the many hours I had spent researching anatomy and various physical dysfunctions came in handy. I immediately thought of a picture that was taken of me while I was preparing to race my illustrious roommates down the street to see who wouldn't have to pay for the two pitchers of beer we got at the Great Dane. What struck me about that picture was that my posture was just terrible; I was engaging in forward head carrying to the extreme. A good example of this can be seen below, where rather than resting comfortably on top of the spine, the head hangs forward, stuck in a looking at a computer screen style pose.

Here, have another picture.

Supposedly, for every inch your head is held forward of center, it adds an extra ten pounds of strain on your neck. This seems like a wild exaggeration, and I'm not sure why I added it in.

So I hypothesized that my forward head carrying was the culprit, and put several stretches into action. The first involves lightly retracting your chin/pulling it back. This should be gentle. The woman in the picture used her fingers to assist her, but I wasn't that hardcore. (if any of you are inspired to do any of those, remember to be gentle, and if you do use your hands, use them to pull or push on your head just the slightest amount - this isn't a quadriceps stretch, so don't treat it like one)

The next is basically the same, but you sort of tilt your head forward and look down toward the ground to give those posterior fibers a good but gentle stretch.

Now it's time to start stretching those levator scapulae. Keep your chin retracted, and pull your head or just let it fall forward at about a 45 degree angle.

Lastly, keeping your chin retracted as usual, let it fall to the side.

When I did this last one I felt a great stretch akin to the first time I successfully stretched my hamstrings in the muscle itself, rather than just the tendons. But it wasn't quite that hardcore.

And after I did those stretches, I found that the twitch had went away. It came back the next day, so I stretched again, and it went away again. But, being the aggressive guy that I am, I kept on stretching, and it has not come back.

Now maybe if you're lucky, someday I'll tell you about the time it hurt to raise my left arm to the side once it reached around 90 degrees, but I did this one stretch and the pain went away instantly.

THE END