How I finally sorted my neck hump after years of hiding it

I'm 48. And the hump at the back of my neck has been my biggest insecurity for the last six years.

I never wore my hair up. Not once. Not at work, not on the school run, not at my niece's wedding last summer — even when it was 28 degrees and everyone else was sweating through their shirts, mine stayed down.

I'd been working from home since the pandemic. Six hours a day hunched over a laptop at the kitchen table. The hump grew slowly enough that I didn't notice until one weekend I caught my reflection in a shop window on the high street and genuinely didn't recognise the posture.

I went to my GP convinced something was seriously wrong.

She had a quick look, told me it was "just my age", suggested I "try paracetamol for the discomfort" and offered me a leaflet on posture.

That was it.

Honestly. The list got embarrassing:

The only thing that actually moved the dial was seeing an osteopath. £85 a session. After three appointments I felt better for about 48 hours each time before the stiffness crept back.

He said I'd need a course of weekly sessions for six months minimum to really shift it. That's well over £2,000. Money I didn't have spare.

For a while, I ignored the hump itself. It was always in the back of my mind, but I'd learned to live with it.

Until it started to ache.

Mornings got rough. I'd wake up with my neck so stiff I had to turn my whole body to check my blind spot reversing the car off the drive. Putting on a jumper felt like a workout. By the time the kids were out the door for school, I'd already taken two paracetamol.

I started Googling private surgery — actual neck-hump removal in places like Harley Street. The quotes I was getting back were £3,500 to £6,000, and I knew I'd never go through with it. But I was getting desperate enough to check.

This was about three weeks before my scheduled clinic consultation.

I was changing out of my Pilates gear in the studio loo and got chatting to a woman about my age — she'd noticed I was struggling to put my jumper back on. She told me she'd had the exact same thing. Exact same thing. Hump, stiffness, mornings, the lot.

Her physio had told her about a small device that combined three things at once — gentle traction (a kind of pulling stretch on the neck), heat, and vibration. She'd been using it 15 minutes a day for about a month.

She turned her head side to side to show me. No stiffness. Hump visibly smaller.

She told me she'd cancelled the surgery she was about to book.

I asked her what it was called. She wrote it down on the back of a Boots receipt: SOLVA Pillow.

I read up on it that night. SOLVA isn't a regular pillow at all — it's a contoured therapy device you lie back on for 15 to 30 minutes a day.

What it does is combine three different things that usually cost you separate appointments:

It's wireless, recharges by USB-C, and shuts off automatically after 30 minutes so you can't overdo it. The whole thing is the size of a rolled-up jumper.

SOLVA offers a 90-night risk-free guarantee. You try it for 90 nights — and if it hasn't done anything for you, you send it back and they refund every penny. No questions, no postage to pay.

Honestly, that's the only reason I went ahead. I'd spent £85 a session on the osteopath with no money back if it didn't work. This was a fraction of the price and they were prepared to put their money where their mouth was.

I ordered one on a Tuesday evening. Tracked delivery turned up Thursday morning.

Before it arrived, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on their reviews page. I wanted to see if other women like me — same age, same problem — were genuinely getting results, or if it was the usual marketing fluff.

I want to be careful here. I'm not a doctor. I can only tell you what happened in my own house, over my own 30 days, with my own neck.

What I will say is this: it cost me less than a single osteopath session. It came with a 90-night money-back guarantee, so there was nothing to lose. And four weeks later, I'm wearing my hair up at the school run for the first time since the pandemic.

My sister came round for tea last weekend, saw me, and asked what I'd been doing. So I told her. She ordered one that night.

If you've been hiding your neck hump under your hair for years, or you've been quietly Googling private surgery, or you've spent more money on physio than you'd ever admit — it's worth a look.

I genuinely wish I'd found this six years ago.