Headaches can cause serious discomfort and may be the result of poor posture or alignment. We provide chiropractic care for headaches sufferers in Newcastle.
Headaches are one of the most common symptoms experienced by people. This condition can be extremely debilitating for the sufferer and/or the family, with most people who experience symptoms reporting a significant impact on both social activities and work capacity.
There are many types of headaches, each with different causes. Often headaches will have more than one contributing factor.
Common types of triggers for headaches will sometimes be lifestyle. Stress, poor diet, lack of exercise or sleep and tension may influence a headache. There may also be serious underlying medical conditions contributing to your headache. Some common types of headaches include, tension headache, cervicogenic headache and migraines.
Is Your Neck Causing the Headache?
A new direction in chronic headache treatment is establishing a strong link to poor neck movement. We find many chronic suffers have not explored the possibility that their headache is being caused by problems with their neck joints. Headaches or migraine symptoms that are caused by an issue in the neck are called cervicogenic headaches. This type of headache is responsive to care which aims to restore normal neck movement.
At Family Life Chiropractic, we are the experienced experts at detecting muscle and joint problems in the neck. Cervicogenic headaches are estimated to affect 20-25% of the adult population.
It is often frustrating for people to learn they have problems in their neck. People are of the belief that a major traumatic injury such as a car accident or fall is required to damage these joints. However, our sedentary repetitive lifestyle often leads to the slow reversal of our normal neck curve. This change to your posture places a great deal of pressure on the neck joints, soft tissue and nerves leading to sensitization of the area.
A comprehensive history and examination, including neurological testing is vitally important to establish the cause of your headache. Imaging of the spine may also be required.
Our training and expertise in joint health allows us to gently restore correct movement to the neck joints. This seems to then have a desenitising effect on the nerves and surrounding tissues. When the correct posture in the neck and shoulders is achieved, far less stress and tension will be experienced in the area.
If you experience headaches, be proactive and have your neck checked. Ignoring or prolonging help will generally only compound the problem.