GUTHRIE, Okla. (WHDH) — Doctors are urging people who crack their necks to be careful after the common habit caused an Oklahoma man to have a serious stroke.
Josh Hader, 28, was suffering from a sore neck on March 14, so he tried to stretch it out. His neck popped and he began losing feeling in the left side of his body.
Hader’s father-in-law brought him to the emergency room, where doctors discovered Hader had a stroke.
“When he popped his neck, he tore arteries that go to the bone of the neck, where the neck joins the skull at the base of the brain,” Dr. Vance McCollum told CNN. “The way he twisted the neck caused a bisection.”
Hader spent four days in Mercy Hospital’s intensive-care unit before he began therapy to regain his balance.
“Currently, I can walk without a walker or cane, but I get tired much faster than before,” Hader told CNN. “My balance is still a little off, but it’s not terrible.”
McCollom recommends that those who want to crack their neck pop it by moving their head side to side instead of twisting it because this can pinch an artery.
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