HEADACHES

It is estimated that 90% of the population will experience headaches or migraines at some point in their life. For at least half of the people who experience headaches or migraines, they come a lot more often than just once. According to the World Health Organization, it is estimated that 50% of adults worldwide experience headaches in any given year. Even every one of us at Roots has experienced headaches at some point in our lives!

There are tension-type headaches, migraine headaches, cluster headaches, and cervicogenic headaches. Sometimes there is pain on one side of the head, pain at the back of the skull, stiffness in the neck, pain behind the eyes, loss of parts of your vision, fuzziness in certain areas you look, and even nausea or vomiting can accompany a headache or migraine, making it that much worse. Whatever way you square it, headaches are absolutely terrible and contribute to so much pain, frustration, and time off of work or time away from doing things you love. In many cases, the cause of headaches can be that the nerves are getting compressed by misaligned bones at the top of the neck and these nerves travel back up into the head and face!

Before Dr Josh experienced Corrective Chiropractic Care, he had headaches 2-3x/week as a teenager. Nevermind the poor posture that awkwardly growing teen boys tend to have, but he also played a lot of ice hockey, which may or may not be known for some hard hits and concussions from time to time. The only thing he wanted to do is do away with the intense pressure, pounding sensations, sensitivity to lights or sounds, and zinging sensations that came across his face when turning his head. He took painkillers, skipped lots of school, turned off all lights and sounds, and would often just get in bed to try sleep them off.

Our Chiropractors in Sea Point use a variety of range of motion, posture, and alignment tests to determine what the underlying cause of the headache is and if Chiropractic care is beneficial. If that is the case then we aim to take stress off of the nerves in the neck and head with adjustments done by hand or with an instrument. Over time we also add in exercises to strengthen the neck into a new postural habit so that you can have long-lasting structural change and kiss those headaches goodbye! Many studies also confirm that some benefits of Chiropractic Care include reducing the frequency and intensity of migraine and headaches. In fact, some studies show that Chiropractic Care has similar effectiveness to medications used for migraine treatment, but with much fewer adverse effects (Posadzki et al., 2011).

Reference:
Posadzki, P., Ernst, E. (2011). Spinal manipulations for the treatment of migraine: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 34(5), 274-279