How Can Chiropractic Care Help Headaches?

Headaches are a common complaint across the population. They range from being an irritation to a full-blown debilitating illness. Therefore, it’s common for people suffering from headaches to turn to medications or even schedule an appointment with their primary care physicians. However, it’s important to note the tie between chiropractic care and headache relief. Chiropractic therapy can be a long-term remedy for your headaches, whether they are mild or severe.

Why Do Headaches Happen?

Headaches can be caused by a multitude of factors including stress, lack of sleep, or tension somewhere in the body. It’s important to note that the spine contains many nerves, muscles, and ligaments which makes it susceptible to problems. Therefore, they can be caused from disruptions in your spine’s alignment. With this in mind, chiropractic treatment doesn’t just address the symptoms and pain of a headache; it treats the source by correcting tension along the spine and in the body.

• Subluxation

If there are any issues with alignment in the spine, the result could be pain in the head. Subluxation refers to dislocations in the spine that may affect how your muscles, nerves, and ligaments work. Correcting the dislocation can decrease the frequency and severity of the pain.

• Stress

When you’re stressed, your body feels the effects in many ways. Stress can cause muscle spasms in the neck. The tightening of these muscles can cause disruption to your nerves and result in a headache. Chiropractic care can help keeps the muscles loosened and keep your body functioning as needed, resulting in fewer headache instances.

• Injuries

Injuries such as whiplash can have long-lasting effects. Whiplash is caused by sudden, hard jerking back and forth motion and injures the neck. Frequently it is experienced in car accidents, but not always noticed and treated right away. In any event, chiropractic care can help correct the damage caused by whiplash.

Types of Headaches

• Migraines

Migraines are very severe headaches that can come with various symptoms. If you are suffering from a migraine, you may experience pulsing pain centralized to a certain location in your head. In addition, you may suffer from nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light and sound, as well as disruptions to your vision. Given these points, migraines are often debilitating and do not allow the sufferer to attend to their normal daily routines.

• Tension headaches

Tension headaches can be caused by stress, emotional triggers, lack of sleep, and more. Generally, these can range from mild to moderate. Notably, this is the most common headache amongst sufferers.

• Hormone headaches

An imbalance of hormones can cause headaches. This type of headache mostly affects women due to the fact that estrogen is the leading cause of the hormonal trigger.

• Cluster headaches

Cluster headaches can occur multiple times in a single day. They often affect the area around the eyes and along the sides of the head.

Treatment Options for Headaches

Depending on the severity and regularity of headaches, sufferers have a few options to provide relief. However, only one of these options focuses on the cause of the headaches, not just the symptoms.

• Over-the-counter medications

Pain relievers can offer relief from some headaches. However, before choosing to take an over-the-counter medication, it’s important to consider the other health risk factors involved with taking them. It should be noted that certain ingredients in OTC headache medications can cause liver damage, stomach or intestinal bleeding, skin rashes, or other serious side effects. It’s important to know that while these medications can help or stop a headache by providing pain relief, they do nothing to fix the root cause of the problem.

• Prescription medications

You may find that your headaches are so severe or regular that you consider prescription medications to manage them. These medications can carry the same dangerous side effects as well as a hefty price tag. At the same time, most prescription medications still only focus on treating the symptoms caused by the headache instead of treating the cause and reducing their frequency.

• Chiropractic care

Thorough and regular chiropractic care keeps your spine in alignment, which removes stress or strain that may be causing your headaches.  In this case if you have any muscles or nerves in your spine that are not positioned correctly, you might find yourself having more headaches with increased severity. Chiropractic care focuses on aligning your spine and making sure these muscles and nerves and positioned correctly to alleviate pain throughout your body.

If you find yourself dealing with the pain caused by chronic headaches, consider chiropractic treatment to treat not only the symptoms, but also the causes. Contact us to learn more about how we can help your headaches and increase your quality of life.

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Disclaimer: The information included in this article is for educational purposes only. It should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

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