By MyHealthNewsDaily staff

If your job is a literal pain in the neck, drinking coffee may help, a new study from Norway says.

People who drank coffee before sitting down to work at a computer for 90 minutes reported less pain in their necks and shoulders than those who didn't drink coffee, according to the study. Some in the study had previously suffered chronic neck and shoulder pain, while other participants hadn't — but people in both groups who drank coffee reported less pain, the researchers said.

Among people whose daily work involves low levels of muscle activity, such as sitting at a computer all day, about 10 percent report shoulder and neck pain, according to the study.

The researchers looked at 48 people, including 22 with chronic neck or shoulder pain, and 26 healthy people. The experiment was part of research on how pain develops during office work; it was not  intended to look at the effects of caffeine, the researchers said.

People in the study reported to the laboratory first thing in the morning, so to offset any effects of sleepiness, coffee and tea were available. Nineteen of the study participants chose to drink coffee, but were instructed not to drink more than one cup. 

Then, for 90 minutes, participants performed a computer task, using only a mouse.

Researchers found that people who drank coffee — whether they had previous chronic pain or not — developed less pain over the course of the 90 minutes, compared with those who didn't drink coffee. And at the end of the computer task, the coffee drinkers rated their pain as less intense than the other study participants. 

It's possible the reduction in pain experienced by coffee drinkers in the study was due to other traits or lifestyle behaviors common to people in this group. Future studies should be conducted in which participants are randomly assigned to consume caffeine or not in order to better understand whether the caffeine itself is truly reducing pain, the researchers said.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Sunnaas Rehabilitation Hospital in Norway, was published Sept. 3 in the journal BMC Research Notes.

More from MyHealthNewsDaily:

• Coffee's Perks: Studies Find 5 Health Benefits
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• 5 Diets That Fight Diseases

For one young man, the most terrifying part of being on a roller coaster happened two weeks after his ride. That's when the 22-year-old African American started having some weird symptoms.

He had headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and trouble walking, according to a case report in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. After two days of feeling miserable, he headed to the emergency room.

The doctors who saw this previously healthy guy noticed that he was walking like he was drunk and his eyes had an up-and-down movement. It was clear his problems weren't alcohol-related and a scan showed swelling on the right side of his brain.

An MRI found that his vertebral artery, one of the main arteries in the neck, had a flap-like tear in its inner wall, says Dr. Davi Sa Leitao, the case study's lead author. This injury to his neck artery caused a clot to form, and the clot dislodged and clogged a smaller blood vessel feeding the cerebellum.

In other words, he had suffered a stroke in a region of the brain responsible for balance, equilibrium, and coordination.

The most likely culprits for a stroke in a young adult are high blood pressure, which the guy didn't have; a genetic abnormality that weakens the blood vessels, or some type of trauma, meaning a physical injury.

Upon questioning, the man mentioned riding a roller coaster two weeks before his symptoms began.

"We believe the roller coaster ride triggered the tear in the blood vessel in his neck and the subsequent stroke," says Sa Leitao, an internal medicine physician at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. "When you ride a roller coaster, your full body is restrained but your neck is still free to move in all directions," he points out.

Although rare, a roller coaster's speeding up and slowing down, and abrupt changes in direction may apply force to the neck and injure one of its blood vessels.

"It's the same rationale when you have a rear-end motor vehicle accident. Your neck goes forward and backwards, what we call the whiplash mechanism," explains Sa Leitao

As for the two-week lag between the ride and the start of symptoms, Sa Leitao suspects the tear in the man's neck artery was small, so it took more time for the clot to develop. This clot eventually clogged the artery causing a stroke.

The guy made a full recovery, but his roller-coaster riding days are behind him.

It's hard to know who may be at risk for developing complications from riding a roller coaster, and they're generally considered safe. But if you have symptoms -- dizziness, nausea, vomiting, trouble walking, neck pain, or vision problems -- after riding one that don't go away, seek immediate medical attention, recommends Sa Leitao.

Readers: Share your roller coaster horror story or tell us why you love them.

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