Chronic neck pain and its relationship with stress symptoms: Regular physical exercise could be a protective factor?

Introduction/Background Mental stress is usually associated with neck pain. Physical exercise is typically recommended to deal with stress and therefore, to relieve neck pain. We studied the relationship of these common variables. Material and method A national cross-sectional interview survey was carried out to the adult Peruvian population with a probabilistic sample on November 2016, through the market research institute GfK. Chronic neck pain was considered for those who referred pain in the neck, the nape and/or the upper shoulders at least once a week on average for the last 6 months. Mental stress was determined asking for eight common symptoms (headache/migraine, stomachache/heartburn, feeling tired, difficulty to sleep, irritability, nervousness, dizziness, and hands tremor - all without any reason or disease), and considered positive for those with 5 or more. Regular physical exercise was determined for those who responded making any sports activity two or more days a week on average, and the lack of it for those making it once a week or none. Odds ratio was calculated using multivariate simple logistic regression with IBM SPSS 20. Results A total of 1244 responded the survey. The OR between mental stress and chronic neck pain was 7.096, P  > 0.000, adjusted for age, sex, socioeconomic status. The OR between the lack of regular physical exercise and neck pain was 0.978, P  > 0.377 ( Table 1 ). Conclusion The study confirms the usual belief about the strong association between chronic neck pain and mental stress but does not with the lack of regular physical exercise. We ought to consider the management of mental stress in the treatment of cervicalgia, but we should not recommend any sports activity to relieve it. Future studies may determine if specific exercises, such as aerobics or stretching, would be a protective factor.