Getting Sick From Your Stiff Neck - Stay Healthy This Cold & Flu Season

Methods abound on how to stay healthy during the cold and flu season and most deal with nutritional deficiencies and cleanliness. There is another, little regarded way to really enhance your body's defenses naturally. This method maximizes immune system function and doesn't require vitamins, garlic, or bathing in hand sanitizer. It addresses the muscular system and requires taking care of your stiff neck.

Let's quickly discuss basic human physiology. The immune system courses throughout the body armed and ready to protect you from foreign invaders, i.e. viruses, bacteria, fungus, etc. Your nose and mouth are the typical entry points for colds & flu. If you imagine your immune cells as cars driving towards these foreign particles, the highway would be the lymphatic system. This highway passes through the neck in order to attack anything in the head. Now what do you think would happen if the muscles in your neck were slowing down the flow of the traffic?

The answer is pretty clear. Tight musculature impedes the flow of blood and lymph between the head and body. This lack of flow and subsequently reduced cellular transport, allow bacteria extra time to infiltrate the upper respiratory tract before your body has a chance to mount a proper defense. In regular terms, your immune system can respond too late to be effective.

The neck muscles play such a large role in the daily function of your nasal passages that just massaging the sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscles near your trachea can immediately affect mucus production in the sinus cavity¹. Imagine how much of an impact you can have just by maintaining the health of your neck!

We've got 2 straightforward tips to safely and naturally supercharge your immune system and get back to 100%. With 5 minutes a day, you can optimize and improve your resistance to the winter sniffles.

1. Stretch - Stretching your neck is a great way to help loosen up muscles and increase circulation of blood and lymph. For better stretch results, apply Battle Balm before you stretch to warm the neck, improve blood flow, lower the pain threshold and increase range of motion.
2. Massage - Two main muscle groups are responsible for affecting much of the upper respiratory tract: scalenes (posterior, medial, anterior), and SCM. By learning how to self-massage these muscles, you can not only improve your immunity, but also feel more relaxed and focused. Use Battle Balm instead of oil or lotion. It is the perfect, mess-free massage balm for tight, restricted muscles.

Not only is Battle Balm a great tool to help you stretch and massage your way back to health, Battle Balm has organic menthol and camphor in it to ease sinus and chest congestion discomfort! And because Battle Balm is 100% natural, it is much healthier for your body than anything else on the market!

1. Travell & Simons myofascial pain and dysfunction the trigger point manual. Vol.1: Upper half of body David G.Simons - Lois S.Simons - Janet G.Travell - Williams & Wilkins - 1999