OC HIGH: Student News & Views : Dance floor Whiplash

Feeling a little stiff in the neck after dancin’ the night away? Perhaps you’re suffering from “head banger’s whiplash.” Neurologist Marilyn Kassirer writes about the affliction in the Clinical Journal of Pain. Head banger’s whiplash develops when muscles that control movement of the head and neck are flexed and extended about as much as they can be, so the head and neck are rhythmically and repetitively rotated, Kassirer said. She found it among 37 teen-age dancers who took part in a five- to seven-hour dance marathon for charity. Neck pain lasted one to three days.