A health TikToker is warning individuals about an unsettling expertise she had after utilizing a therapeutic massage gun on her neck. Within the video, which has racked up 4.6 million views to date, Sophie Dolce defined that she not too long ago awakened with “the worst kink in her neck.” So she turned to her therapeutic massage gun for some reduction, noting that she focused her neck, the bottom of her cranium, shoulder, and again. On that day, Dolce used the massager continuously — on a excessive setting, each half-hour between 8am and 5pm — as a result of it “briefly” helped ease her ache.

“I ended up getting tremendous sore, pink, infected…throughout the place I used to be utilizing it,” Dolce, who didn’t reply to a request for remark, stated within the video. She ended up feeling worse and had bother sleeping that night time as a result of she was “in a lot ache.” When she awakened within the morning, the ache had continued and she or he felt an uncommon lump on her neck. A spurt of panicked googling prompted her to see a physician instantly.

“My physician was like, ‘Don’t you dare ever use a therapeutic massage gun in your neck,’” she stated, including that she was warned this may mess with the blood move within the space that results in the mind. Dolce stated she may need an infected lymph node as a result of she used the system a lot, however she’s getting some testing finished to make sure.

Numerous individuals depend on a therapeutic massage gun to alleviate muscle soreness, rigidity, and ache — so we requested consultants about Dolce’s PSA, and so they stated she’s proper to name consideration to it.

Why you shouldn’t use a therapeutic massage gun instantly in your neck

A number of individuals within the feedback of Dolce’s publish stated both they or a beloved one had skilled a stroke or seizure after utilizing a therapeutic massage gun on their neck — and that is, in actual fact, a danger. As Dolce talked about in her video, there’s a pair of carotid arteries on all sides of your neck, which have the essential job of transferring oxygen-rich blood out of your coronary heart to your mind and the remainder of your head.

“You don’t want to make use of percussive remedy — a therapeutic massage gun — over an artery,” Ryan Krzyzanowicz, DAT, the director of athletic coaching training on the College at Buffalo, insists. Percussive gadgets typically ship “speedy pulses briefly bursts of strain” straight into your tissues, as one medical paper places it. So whenever you’re utilizing one proper in your neck, “we get fearful about blood move to the mind. In idea, percussion may briefly starve the mind from blood move, inflicting a mini stroke or stroke-like signs.” (This might embody sudden confusion or bother talking, numbness or weak spot on one aspect of the physique, a quick-hitting and extreme headache, and bother strolling or seeing, amongst different issues.)

Neel Anand, MD, a board-certified orthopaedic surgeon and co-director of backbone trauma at Cedars-Sinai Backbone Middle, agrees. “A therapeutic massage gun shouldn’t be used on the entrance or aspect of the neck,” he says. “You might displace the carotid artery and get a stroke.”