Hi Tia, I'm a physio.

I have to say I don't quite understand what's going on from your explanation but anyway, I'll try to give you some generic information. Firstly, x rays won't help at all unless you had a history of a specific traumatic event eg fell off your bike onto your head. So you don't need to go and get those done - I'm sure that will be a great relief for you! Ultrasound to the back also hasn't got a lot of evidence supporting its use.

The neck is a really interesting part of the body. There's a lot of bones, joints, ligaments, disks, and muscles hanging around as well as your spinal cord and nerves. To understand a bit more about what might be causing your pain, your physio probably asked things like 'what makes it worse and better' and made you do some movements to see what happened. There are quite a few different theories within the physio practice which means different physios choose different treatment approaches. Your physio is a manip physio, an area with postgrad training, and also with research supporting manipulation in certain conditions such as acute neck problems. Our practice uses mechanical diagnosis and therapy (MDT) which also requires postgraduate training - my husband completed the full post grad training on this. There is also a lot of research around this approach, particularly in its strength in diagnosis compared to invasive tests like CT scans and discograms (where it has been shown to match the gold standard medical imaging diagnosis accuracy).

Anyway, please keep going to your physio if you are continuing to improve. If you are not, please talk to your physio about other options, or other physios. Regardless, don't worry about x rays.

Get better soon!