Headaches are a common occurence that many will experience at times throughout their life. But, when headaches become chronic and severely impact one’s ability to function, alternatives to over-the-counter pain management must be sought.
Many don’t even realize that chiropractic and wellness clinics offer alternative headache treatment options that can be highly effective.
In fact, the types of chiropractic adjustments and wellness services offered are some of the most reliable ways to deal with headaches because they seek to address the root of issues — not just the symptoms.
Several types of headache pain can be alleviated and potentially even eliminated with chiropractic care, wellness services, and lifestyle changes. At Optimum Health Rehab, Dacula, our chiropractors can help you find relief from headaches with their expert care and programs.
Find out how we can help you during a no-risk, no-obligation evaluation appointment when you call (678)546-8044 or contact us online.
Common Reasons for Seeking Headache Treatment
Headaches — especially tension headaches — can be tied to stress. Many daily stressors such as work, school, home, family, and paying bills: can be the direct culprits of headache pains.
Sometimes there is physical strain as well as emotional stress. For example, we often see patients with cervicogenic headaches from occupational stressors, like sitting at a desk all day or hunching over something they’re working on.
Poor posture may not sound like a major medical concern, but it can negatively impact your overall posture and skeletal alignment, which in turn causes strain on the neck muscles, leading to headaches.
Optimum Health Rehab’s health and wellness services can help treat nearly every type of headache. For many, headaches are frequently tied to hormone imbalances, posture, work, stress, diet, and lifestyle.
Our team offers several tests and non-invasive treatment options that can help determine where you might be having problems and how those deficiencies or health struggles could be causing your headaches.
Once we’ve identified the cause, we can develop a customized plan to help you tackle your health problems and eliminate your headaches.
Headache Relief Options Available at Optimum Health Rehab in Dacula
Someone suffering from headaches can go to any clinic for help, but Optimum Health Rehab Dacula /Hamilton Mill offers quality care from our expert chiropractors. Here are a few of the treatment options we may recommend, depending on your diagnosis and triggers:
- Spinal manipulation — The spinal cord connects to nerves all over the body, including those in the neck and head. In many situations, an adjustment relieves tension and improves blood flow to blocked or compressed areas, preventing referred pain in other parts of the body, such as the head.
- Myofascial release therapy — A massage therapy technique that targets certain tissues prone to causing tension. Myofascial tissues are the tough membranes that wrap and connect to help support other muscular structures in the body. These tissues help other parts of the body move. The pain felt by those with this diagnosis is caused by trigger points, which cause stiffness in the tissues and limit mobility.
- Trigger point massage therapies — These target myofascial tissues that have become tight, rigid, or inflamed. This painful condition is often referred to as muscle knots, inflicted by injury, repetitive stress, or overuse. Myofascial problems can create pain trigger points that reduce the range of motion and can cause neck pain, back pain, muscle spasms, and other types of pain. Trigger point therapy can help treat myofascial pain syndrome, which is frequently a side effect of car accident whiplash, bad posture, or surgery.
Platelet-rich plasma injections, or PRP
People most often associate PRP treatment with healing ligament or tendon injuries, and these shots are excellent for dealing with soft tissue injuries.
The National Headache Institute notes that for some patients, PRP may result in fewer headache episodes and less severe pain when headaches occur.
Neurology
Our neurology team can help investigate any nerve issues that may be contributing to your headaches.
Sometimes this treatment plan goes hand-in-hand with spinal manipulation or other treatments that attempt to relieve tension and blockages in areas where nerves connect the spinal cord to other parts of the body.
Avoiding a Sedentary Lifestyle
People who spend a large amount of time sitting in one position may benefit from taking a break at least once an hour to get up and stretch. Especially for those working in offices or on a computer, they tend to sit for the majority of their shift.
To make matters more complicated, once they leave work, they sit while driving, eating dinner, and watching TV, only to then make their way to bed at night to rest before the next work day.
A sedentary lifestyle can be detrimental to one’s posture and circulation, causing or intensifying recurring headaches.
Establishing a routine that includes stretches and standing periodically can help reduce the tension that causes certain headaches. Stretching may also prevent pain signals from traveling through our bodies that are connected to the spinal cord and reach to the brain.
Proprioceptive Stretching
In some cases, we walk the patient through stretching techniques designed to reduce tension.
These routines can then be performed in the home as well as through supervised activities in our office setting, where we can make use of the equipment and aids to really target problem areas.
Identifying Different Types of Headaches
Headaches are inconvenient and can be unbearably painful, and each headache can result from different causes. Understanding where your headaches begin and how they progress while in pain can give insight into what is causing discomfort.
Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ) Headaches
Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ) headaches usually consist of pain in front of your ears and the edges of your temple. The cause of this disorder is difficult to pinpoint, as it can be triggered by genetics, past injuries, and even arthritis. Many patients suffering from this condition also grind their teeth at night.
Treatment for this kind of headache is normally nonsurgical, although there are some rare cases where surgery is the only solution to resolve this condition. Most cases go away with self-managed care and nonsurgical treatments, like chiropractic sessions.
Cluster Headaches
Cluster headaches are one of the rare kinds of headaches that tend to feel like they’re in or behind one or both of your eyes. It is reported that those affected by cluster headaches may also have a runny nose and reddened eyes and feel the pain onset within 10 to 15 minutes.
The pain a person feels is severe, lasting anywhere from one to three hours on average.
What makes these kinds of headaches even worse is that they can occur more than once a day and continue throughout a period of time without showing signs of stopping. These kinds of headaches usually begin around the age of 30 and tend to affect females more often than men.
While the exact cause of these headaches is unknown, research suggests that it is caused by a sudden release of histamine or serotonin in the body.
Migraines
Migraines frequently affect a part of your head, but the pain can be so visceral that you might struggle to function or complete daily tasks. Migraines are common and roughly affect about 3 million people each year.
Migraines can last up to several days without treatment.
There are four possible stages that can appear when someone is going through a migraine. They are prodrome, aura, attack, and post-drome.
Patients with this condition find that they also have nausea, vomiting, and sensitivity to sound and light.
Sinusitis
Sinusitis feels like pressure near the brows, cheekbones, and the bridge of your nose.
The sinuses are four cavities with narrow passages connecting each one to the other. The role of these passages is to drain out mucus from those passages keeping the nose free of obstruction and bacteria.
However, when sinuses become blocked, it causes inflammation, pressure, nasal congestion, and other symptoms.
There are different degrees of sinusitis, varying from acute to recurrent episodes, that can happen more than four times a year. Often these are caused by a build-up of bacteria, allergies, the flu, and the common cold.
Tension headaches
Tension headaches are most frequently described as feeling as if a band is being squeezed around your head. These headaches cause a dull, aching pain with a sensation of tightness across the forehead and the sides and back of the head.
These types of headaches can be episodic or chronic.
Episodic tension headaches happen less than 15 days per month, lasting from 30 minutes to a full week. On the other hand, chronic tension headaches happen more than 15 days in a given month and happen continuously, lasting for hours each time.
Cervicogenic Headaches
Cervicogenic headaches involve pain that is localized at the top or back of your head. These kinds of headaches begin at the neck and are recurrent headaches that are caused by neck movement. When the headache is present, the patient may find that they have limited mobility in their neck.
To receive a diagnosis of cervicogenic headaches, patients must meet these three criteria:
- The pain must begin in the neck and be perceived in the head or face.
- There must be evidence that the pain started in the neck.
- The pain will resolve within three months after treatment of the disorder.
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It’s Time to Put Your Headaches to Rest
Headaches can really impact one’s quality of life and ability to enjoy things that they normally would. We’re here to help you find relief through a tailored plan that targets the root of your headache triggers while also helping you alleviate your symptoms.
Contact Optimum Health Rehab in Dacula/ Hamilton Mill to request your appointment online, or call (678) 546-8044 to see how we can help manage your headache pains through our chiropractic and wellness services.