Headache Treatment

I have been seeing a large number of headache patients over the past several weeks.  I believe this crazy lack of winter and up and down spring has a lot to do with it.  This year's allergy sufferers are going to have a tough year.  Unfortunately, this factor increases the chance of getting all kinds of headaches, as they do tend trigger each other.  So, I have decided to revisit an article from 2010 regarding headaches:

Suffer from frequent headaches? Chiropractic care may be able to help. There are many reasons why headaches occur. They can be migraines, tension, trauma induced, sinus, cluster or multiple other types, each having its own causation. Headaches are a very complex topic and are not well understood by a large portion of the population. On health intake sheets at my office, I very often see migraine circled, only to discover that the patient simply thought that denoted a severe headache. While migraines are severe headaches, not all severe headaches are migraines. Getting to the root cause of the headache will help determine if the headache is likely to respond to chiropractic care. But, as with most things in the body, there are no perfect rules and there is a lot of overlap of headache causes. For example, a migraine sufferer may also get a tension headache. If he or she gets enough of those headaches, it can cause a "ramping effect" and trigger a migraine. 

As a chiropractor and a tension headache sufferer, I am well aware of the benefit of chiropractic care for tension headaches. I have also had great success with helping migraine sufferers decrease the frequency of their headaches or control headache pain during times when taking their medication is not possible, such as pregnancy. Trauma induced headaches that linger beyond a few days also respond well to chiropractic care. Cluster headaches are more difficult to control with chiropractic, and sinus headaches only respond if you can manage to relieve the sinus pressure, which can sometimes be achieved with chiropractic care. 

You may be wondering what chiropractic care for a headache consists of. Generally, I will use 3 or 4 different elements. The chiropractic adjustment is number one. Headaches almost always have a link to the cervical spine, or neck. This link may be direct or indirect. Secondly, I use trigger point therapy to relieve muscle tension. I will also frequently incorporate passive modalities like electrical muscle stimulation or ultrasound. Lastly, home stretching and/or exercises are added to relieve muscle tension and re-establish proper muscle balance. 

The amount of time that it will take to get your headaches under control will vary person to person, but if you are going to see a change, it should start within 2 weeks. Many people experience dramatic improvement after just one treatment. BUT, like everything with headaches, it varies. However, it is generally a relatively small time and money investment to see if chiropractic care can help.