Every week, I have more and more patients coming in who tell me they feel stressed out and overwhelmed. That, coupled with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, means most of these patients also complain of headaches, which is not surprising. The latest studies show that 90% of headaches are considered "tension headaches" - and more than 95 percent of those are so-called "primary" headaches, such as migraine clusters. While some headaches are caused by food or environmental allergies, most are triggered simply by the way people sit at their desks or in their cars day in and day out.
What do you do when you experience a headache? If you're like most people, you turn to your medicine cabinet to relieve the pain. But that's only a temporary fix. In fact, some medical experts believe that using painkillers more than a few times per week can actually perpetuate headaches, making them return as soon as the medication wears off. They say any painkiller in your medicine cabinet is capable of causing rebound headaches if you take it often enough and in large-enough quantities. Over-the-counter medications that contain aspirin can cause rebound headaches and combining these painkillers with caffeine can be even worse.
If you don't get to the true root of the problem, the headaches can reoccur, interfering with every aspect of your life. Fortunately, there is an effective alternative - and it's not in your medicine cabinet.
As a board-certified chiropractor, most patients that I see are experiencing headaches from muscle tension and subluxation (misalignment) of the cervical spine and upper back. They are unaware that improperly sitting in a chair, looking at a computer screen all day, can create pressure on the spine, leading to a variety of issues.
Chiropractic treatment can help you get rid of your pain and make long-lasting changes. A study released in 2001 by the Duke University Evidence-Based Practice Center in Durham, N.C., showed that spinal manipulation treatments resulted in an almost-immediate improvement for headaches that originate in the neck. Furthermore, the study reported the treatments had significantly fewer side effects and longer-lasting relief of tension-type headache than a commonly prescribed medication.
Additionally, chiropractic treatment can help relieve headaches by spinal manipulation and trigger point therapy and massage. These treatments are effective, and I often recommend my patients engage in physical therapy as well, which can restore and correct your posture for long-lasting relief.
