How Chiropractic Care Can Help
Understanding Your Headaches
Stress >> Tension >> Neck Pain >> Headache
This is the common journey for most headache sufferers. There are 129 classifications of headaches of this, there are 3 that are most common.
They include:
- Migraines
- Tension-Type
- Cervicogenic (cervico = neck and genic = orginating from)
Migraines can be debilitating in nature and are the most commonly experienced type of headache. “Chronic tension” headaches, second most common headache type is defined by a headache sufferer experiencing more than 180 headaches per year. Cervicogenic headache suffers report a frequency of about 5 times per month.
Diagnosis and Treatment
The key to treating any condition is the proper diagnosis of that condition. To properly diagnose your headache, you and your doctor will work as a team.
Some of the important characteristics to address are:
- Frequency – (How often you experience headaches)
- Severity – (The rating of your pain on a 10 scale with 10 being the highest pain level)
- Locations – (One side, both sides, behind the eyes, starts in the neck etc.)
- Other Factors – Flashing of light or associated nausea and/or vomiting.
A landmark research study conducted by the prestigious Duke University reported that chiropractic adjustments/treatment in the cervical(neck area) resulted in immediate improvement of cervicogenic headaches. A course of chiropractic adjustments resulted in sustained improvement in headache frequency and severity.
In tension headaches, chiropractic care was compared to common medication called amitriptyline. One month after a six-week course of treatment, patients who had received chiropractic care were significantly better than those who had taken amitriptyline for both headache frequency and severity.
If you or someone you know is suffering from headaches, a complete Chiropractic evaluation maybe the first step to freedom from pain.