Your head can be too heavy for your neck if you have weak muscles in the neck where your muscles cannot support the head.
If you strain any of your muscles in your neck, upper back or head then the head can start to feel heavy.
A condition that causes your head to feel like it's too heavy for your neck is called dropped head syndrome.
Dropped head syndrome is a condition in which a person has severe weakness of the muscles of the back of their neck which causes the persons chin to rest on their chest.
Dropped Head Syndrome usually develops over a period of one week to three months.
The head is then tilted downward. Because of the weakness of the extensors of the neck, the chin rests on the chest.
Lifting or raising the head in sitting or standing is impossible.
When lying down however, the neck is able to extend.
In most cases Dropped Head Syndrome is caused by a specific generalized neuromuscular diagnosis.
These include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's disease, myasthenia gravis, polymyositis, and genetic myopathies.
The most useful treatment for dropped head syndrome is use of a neck collar.
The neck collar can partially correct the chin-on-chest deformity.
This improves the forward gaze and activities of daily living.
It also can help prevent contractures of the neck in a fixed flexed posture.
The dropped head syndrome (DHS) is a disabling condition caused by severe weakness of the neck extensor muscles causing progressive reducible kyphosis of the cervical spine and the inability to hold the head up.
Weakness can occur in isolation or in association with a generalized neuromuscular disorder.
The development of dropped head syndrome (DHS) is followed by severe cervical extensor muscle weakness, resulting in head overflexion or chin-on-chest deformity in the standing or sitting upright position.