Chiropractic Made Easy: Headaches and Chiropractic

With all the stresses found in everyday life, the last thing someone needs is a headache. For those who suffer from headaches, either regularly or only occasionally, they know that a headache not only increases their stress level, but makes them feel like they cannot “think straight”, which in turn makes you feel more stressful, which in turn makes your headache seem worse than turn … Well, you get the picture.
 
People say “It’s just tension, my head always hurts when I feel stressed.” Yes, that may be true and there is a reason for that. Millions of people experience additional tension and stress every day, but a good percentage do not have headaches. Did you ever wonder why?
 
While some headaches are caused by conditions like high blood pressure, low blood sugar, hormonal changes, hangovers, dental problems, etc. the vast majority of headaches actually originate in the neck. By correcting the problem in the neck, the cause of the headache can be eliminated. “Yeah yeah sure you’re a chiropractor, of course you say you can ‘fix’ headaches and they come from your neck, that’s what you work with. But my neck is fine.”
 
Well here’s why headaches often originate from the neck …

Tension headaches and migraines are the most common types of headaches and can be triggered by stress or fatigue. But how does the neck get into it? In most cases, the underlying cause of a headache is that one of the bones (vertebra) in the neck is out of place (or out of alignment), usually due to poor posture or injury.

The sequence of events in a tension headache would look like this:
 
1. A misalignment or out of place vertebra causes irritation to a spinal nerve;

2. Stress or fatigue causes the neck muscle to contract;

3. The muscles put pressure on the misaligned vertebra, further irritating the spinal nerve;

4. The irritated spinal nerve sends “warning” signals to the surrounding neck muscles to tighten (spasm) to protect your misaligned vertebra;

5. These irritated nerves also send warning signals to the muscles in the head, which then also tense up;

6. Tight muscles create a chain reaction.
 
A chiropractor helps get rid of headaches by placing the vertebra in its correct position. That removes the irritation from the nerve that sends the pain message to the muscles in the head and brain.