Migraines and Headaches – It’s Not Just in Your Head!
Headaches and migraines are a common reason for consulting a doctor. Up to 90% of adult’s report having head pain of some sort, with them tending to be more common in women than in men1.
From being a mild irritation that slows you down at home, at work or with family and friends, to disabling pain that knocks you out, headaches and migraines affect your life in various ways. Beyond the actual pain there are other issues that can develop including fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, altered movement patterns, impaired decision making and long term behavioural issues.
Headaches and migraine are the 6th leading cause of disability worldwide2 and migraines have even been linked to changes in the structure of the brain. While they can be disabling they are very rarely linked to sinister conditions like cancer or other brain diseases.
Typically, there are 4 primary types of headache: tension, cluster, migraine and medication rebound. These can be further classified into over 150 different diagnostic categories3 including trauma, sinus, nutrition and tumours.
While painkillers, lotions, massages and pain modulating devices might be able to temporarily numb the pain they do not address the underlying cause. Apart from the harmful side effects of drugs, their numbing effect will also force the body to compensate in new ways that will cause pain and damage elsewhere in your body.
Muscles, bones, nerves, tendons, joints, blood vessels and fascia could all play a role in head pain and the question is why are they causing pain? Through the discovery and development of Advanced BioStructural Correction (ABC™) it is now known that slumped posture is often linked to pain of various sorts.
When you stand in a relaxed position your body is meant to hold you up. What often happens is that we have to hold our bodies up to prevent them from slumping. Your posture slumps forward as a result of bones going out of place (particularly in the spine) in a direction they cannot be self-corrected by the body. When a person’s body tends to slump forward it creates tension or pinching on many of the sensitive structures in your body and creates pain. Many times the cause for the slump is not in the same place as the pain it creates. By finding the cause for the slump and working to correct it the pain can resolve.
Because the cause of headaches and migraines could lie in areas of the body other than the head, the solution lies in looking at what is happening in the whole body and not just at the site of pain. A very useful way to do this is to assess body function and posture to analyse how your body is holding itself upright. This gives you a window into your spine and nervous system health. As a certified ABC™ provider Body Centric Wellness is trained in analysing your posture and determining where the source of your headaches/migraines may be.
Armed with that information you can rest assured that by working with us we can help your body to correct those things it otherwise can’t and to improve your lifestyle to help your body improve the things that it can. Lifestyle changes might begin with changes in how you sit, sleep and stand and move onto exercises, nutritional changes and stress management.
People who get ABC™ treatment report relief from many different ailments and not just headache and migraine. They are therefore able to function at higher levels and cope better with life’s many stresses. Our goal is to help you get back to health and be the best you can be. Let us get to the root cause of your ailment(s). We offer a FREE consultation including a demo of the ‘First Rib Manoeuver’ before you decide on proceeding with any treatment. You will feel the difference to your pain and movement right from the off.
References
- Morbidity and Mortality Weekly – Centres for Disease Control.
- Bloom DE, Cafiero ET, Jan e Llopis E, et al. The Global Economic Burden of Non-communicable Diseases. World Economic Forum. January 2012:1–48.
- Williams LA. A concise discussion of headache types, Part 1. Int J Pharm Compd. 2012;16(2):125–132.
- Clar C, Tsertsvadze A, Court R, Hundt GL, Clarke A, Sutcliffe P. Clinical effectiveness of manual therapy for the management of musculoskeletal and non-musculoskeletal conditions: systematic review and update of UK evidence report. Chiropr Man Therap. 2014;22(1):12. doi:10.1186/2045-709X-22-12.