A variety of things can cause neck pain, from consistently bad posture to accidents to diseases. There are also a lot of theories about why so many people are stricken with occasional neck pain, but there are no scientific studies to back up any of these theories.

Many people never do pinpoint the reason they have neck pain, but sometimes the cause can be diagnosed. Here are some of the possible neck pain causes :

Muscle Strain – Muscles can get overused, like in the case of hours of driving with the head and neck hunched over a steering wheel or sitting at a computer. The muscles in the back of the neck get fatigued and after enough time they can be strained.

Wear and tear on the joints – The joints in your neck are just as susceptible to wearing as any other joint in your body as you age. After a time, this wear can lead to osteoarthritis.

Vertebrae problems – Neck pain causes are often related to the compression of a nerve when one of a variety of problems reduces the amount of space between vertebrae and a nerve becomes pinched. Some of the things that cause this are herniated disks that occur when the material inside a disk sticks through the outer covering; bone spurs that press on the nerves; or disks that become stiff and dry, shrinking the spaces in the spinal column where the nerves are.

Trauma or injury – An example of this is whiplash that often occurs in automobile accidents. Whiplash results when the head is dramatically jerked forward and then backwards.

There are also a number of diseases that can be neck pain causes like rheumatoid arthritis, meningitis, and in rare cases, cancer. If the pain is sudden and intense, this type of pain is acute and is sometimes referred to as a crick in the neck.