Stiff Neck

Underdog

Realy quick. Just woke up with a stiff neck and I can't seem to find a definitive answer for whether to use heat or ice to treat it. What do you guys say?

MichaelLC

I would say heat.

I believe cold is more for immediate injuries, like getting hit playing football or whatever, to keep the swelling down.

IANAD, etc.

Corvus

I would try heat to help relax the muscles. I know when this happens to me, a hot shower helps.

Casual

For muscle problems like back ache and neck pain you usually use heat, ice as has been said, is to treat swelling.

Also IANAD.

Essee

Unquestionably use heat for stuff like this unless you really need temporary pain relief that might make you feel worse in a little while, depending on how bad your neck is. I think I'm pretty qualified to say this since in recent months I've been having pretty bad pain due to some muscle spasms around my shoulders (heat is the only thing that helps when it's happening, and if I use ice instead it just makes it feel worse after 15 minutes), and stiff necks are the same sort of problem.

Basically, I think that, as Casual said, rule of thumb is heat for muscles, ice for anything with swelling and sometimes headaches (sometimes heat happens to work better, though).