Headaches and What You Can Do About Them

Causes of Headaches

Headaches are a common complaint heard by doctors every day. People of all ages get headaches and there are many different types of headaches as well as many causes. Headache pain can range from mild to excruciating and may occur once a year or as often as once a day for some people. Often, pain sufferers attribute their headaches to stress and while stress is a common cause of tension headaches, there are other factors you may not have considered. Let's look at stress for a moment. Work stress, family stress and even physical stress from over exertion such as shoveling snow when you haven't done it for a while, can cause a headache. But did you know that chemical stress from artificial sweeteners, food additives, polluted air and water can also cause headaches? Whenever your body has to deal with any type of pollution, be it from something you've ingested or something you've breathed into your lungs, it puts stress on your immune system and nervous system and may cause you pain.

Migraine headache pain is one of the most intense types of pain a person can experience. Migraines may have multiple causes as well. Food allergies -- such as allergies to wheat and or gluten, hormonal fluctuations and even bright light can trigger a migraine headache for some. If you suffer from chronic migraines, you might want to keep a food diary to track what you're eating on a daily basis. Then record the days you experience migraine headaches and compare it to your diet for the last 24 hours. After a couple of weeks, or a month, you should be able to see if there is a pattern to what you are eating and when the headaches occur. If there is a pattern, say every time you eat too much wheat you get a migraine, then you know that you are probably allergic to it and it would be best for you to eliminate that food from your diet to see if your migraines stop. If you are a female, of any age, and you experience migraines, you may want to have your hormone levels checked by a physician to see if you need to have your levels of estrogen and progesterone balanced.

Cervicogenic headaches are headaches caused by a problem with your neck and may cause migraine type pain. More specifically, it is a problem with the bones in your neck or "cervical spine". People who suffer from these types of headaches will often complain of having a stiff neck and/or neck pain with a decreased range of motion when turning their head from side to side. They describe the pain as starting in the back of their neck and travelling up into their head. Causes of cervicogenic headaches include: previous injury to the neck, prolonged flexion of the neck muscles (looking down for too long), and even sleeping on a pillow that is not the right size for your neck. Often people will get their necks massaged to relieve the stiffness and pain, but only a chiropractor can determine if the bones in your neck need to be realigned to correct the underlying cause of your pain and stiffness. Once the bones of the spine are realigned, the neck pain usually goes away because the cause of the pain has been corrected.


Headaches, in general, respond very well to chiropractic care. Studies were conducted by the International Headache Society consisting of 123 participants who suffered from at least one migraine headache per month. The placebo group received treatment with electrodes while the experimental group received chiropractic adjustments. The results of this study showed that the group who received chiropractic treatment for their migraines had significant improvement in the frequency, disability and duration of their headache pain. In addition, the chiropractic recipients used less medication to alleviate their headaches.

Conclusion

If you are having headache pain, especially pain that is chronic or is getting worse, you need to find out the cause of your pain so that you can alleviate it. Gentle chiropractic care is available. There are chiropractors who do not ever twist the neck or push forcefully on the spine to make corrections. These chiropractors use gentle techniques such as Network Spinal Analysis and Activator and these techniques work just as well, if not better than more traditional chiropractic care. For more information visit http://www.bretonchiropractic.com/ - Grand Rapids Chiropractor.