Headaches are discomfort felt in one or more areas of the head and face. Sometimes upper back or neck pain may also be interpreted as a headache. There are many causes of headaches, including tension headache, migraine headache, cluster headache, occipital neuralgia or trigeminal neuralgia (specific nerve-related pain syndromes). The most common type is the “Muscular Tension Headache.” If you suffer from frequent headaches, you want them to go away.
Tension headaches generally result from prolonged contraction of the suboccipital muscles. These muscles bridge the junction between the posterior (back) of the skull and the vertebrae (bones) of the cervical spine (neck). Several mechanisms seem to be involved in the causation of the common headache:
Today more than ever people are inclined to sit for hours with contracted postural muscles while ignoring necessary physical activity. When muscles contract they burn fuel and produce waste. Among the waste products of muscle contraction are lactic acid, histamine and bradykinins. These waste products are irritants. If they are not efficiently removed from the muscle they can cause muscular inflammation and pain and accumulate into localized tender areas known as “trigger points.”
These waste products should normally be diluted and removed from the muscle tissue by circulation. This process relies on the normal “contract – relax” cycle in the muscle. When the muscle contracts it creates a high pressure on the fluids inside the muscle and pushes blood out, carrying away muscular waste products.
When the muscle relaxes, the pressure falls and blood floods back in carrying vital nutrients and fuel. When we sit or stand we are using the many back and neck muscles required to support our body. When these muscles are held contracted for a prolonged time (hours spent sitting or standing), they are producing irritative wastes, but not relaxing and draining themselves of these irritants. Over time these irritants can cause the muscles to lose their natural suppleness and resting length, becoming stiffened and shortened. These stiffened and shortened muscles, often accompanied by trigger points, can cause reflex pain into the neck and head.
The vertebrae of the spine fit together on moving joints that provide strength to the structure of the spine and maintain the vertebrae in proper working alignment with one another. The joints of the spine in the neck are richly innervated (supplied) with nerve fibers that can cause pain in the head and neck if the joints are physically strained or injured.
Once the above process has produced stiffness and shortening of the muscles in the neck, the joints of the spine are no longer properly stabilized or supported. The affected joints of the spine often become subluxated (misaligned). This causes strain and injury to the joints and supporting ligament tissue. The result of the combined subluxation, ligament strain and joint injury is often neck pain with associated headache.
The brain and spinal cord are enclosed within a protective covering known as the “meninges.” The tough outer layer of the meninges is known as the “dura mater.” If this covering becomes inflamed you can experience severe headaches, neck pain and mental affects. The diagnosis of “meningitis” refers to an inflammation of the meninges.
A convenient way to reduce the pain caused by headaches is to ingest a drug that covers up pain or fools the body so it doesn’t feel the pain. In the short term, this quiets the pain. But, as you might expect, this strategy can cause the underlying problem to worsen, making it more difficult (and expensive) to correct later when this method no longer works. While convenient, drugs that numb your nervous system have unwanted effects, such as kidney failure or liver damage. Worse, they do little to correct the underlying cause of the headache.
The key to stopping your headaches is to find out their exact cause. That’s what chiropractic is all about. The first – and most important – step you can take is to visit a trained health care professional who will take your headaches seriously. There’s nothing more frustrating than being told your headaches are “all in your head” or that “you have to learn to live with it.” With chiropractic you can live without headaches!
Doctors of Chiropractic do not “treat” headaches. Rather, chiropractic is a natural method of correcting underlying structural problems that can lead to headaches. Doctors of Chiropractic successfully help thousands of individuals everyday to obtain safe, effective, long-term relief from their headaches. This is because most headaches have a spinal, muscular, or habitual component which the chiropractor has been trained to identify and treat. In fact, surveys show that 10-25% of patients initiate chiropractic care for the relief of headaches.
Many millions of adults worldwide get headaches regularly. Headaches are among the most common physical complaints prompting people to treat themselves or get professional assistance. One estimate holds that some 50 million people in the U.S. get severe, long-lasting, recurring headaches. Most headaches are not signs of serious underlying conditions, but they can be very distracting, debilitating and account for significant amounts of time lost from work.
If you are a headache sufferer, your obvious concern is to obtain safe, dependable relief. You should avoid making things worse by using drugs – even over-the-counter, nonprescription drugs – that can have serious side effects and dangerous interactions with other medications or supplements you take. You should also be aware that many people experience what are termed “analgesic rebound headaches” from taking painkillers every day, or nearly every day. The medicine you take to get rid of today’s headache may give you a headache tomorrow and the days after.
Chiropractors have had considerable success relieving the cause of headache pain and releasing headache sufferers from the dangerous, vicious cycle of taking ever-larger doses of ever-stronger painkillers that may even be causing new and worse headaches. Chiropractic adjustments have shown to be as effective as and even more effective than medications in reducing the severity and frequency of headaches. Chiropractic is particularly successful in dealing with cervicogenic headaches. Even though cervicogenic and other tension-type headaches may not actually involve stress or muscle tension, chiropractic’s ability to adjust spinal abnormalities seems to lessen or remove the forces contributing to many individuals’ headache pain.
Roughly 85% of headaches are neck-related, resulting from not having the proper curve in the neck (commonly caused by sitting and holding our neck too high or low, or through injuries). Chiropractic care helps remove subluxations and restore the neck’s natural curve – a much more natural way to relieve headaches than taking medications!
Chiropractic is a healing system that focuses on the structure of the body. Research has proved that chiropractic treatment can be beneficial for many muscle and joint problems. Chiropractic is a branch of the healing arts based on the scientific fact that our nervous system controls or influences the function of every cell in our body. Interference to the nervous system (caused by the vertebral subluxation complex) will effect how the nervous system relates to the cell to which it travels.
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