Headache and Migraine
For the 20% of people to whom headache is more than just a temporary discomfort.
A simple name for a complex condition
Because of the area of the pain, it is very easy to assume that it is your brain that is aching. But in fact, your brain does not have the ability to feel pain.
Actually, it is the arteries of the brain and skull, the tissue covering the brain and the cranial nerves that cause pain when they are infected, pulled, inflamed, stretched, compressed or irritated.
That’s why a headache is never a simple condition: over 20 varieties have been identified. Causes range from the more drastic tumours to exposure to bright light, eye or dental problems, blood pressure and many others including, of course, stress.
We can even get a worse headache by worrying about our headache!
Tension headache
Muscle tension caused by stress, whether it arises from worry, overwork, anxiety or other highly emotional states of mind, is often a major factor in headaches.
Migraine
Perhaps the best known type of severe headache. The symptoms are very distressing, with periodic attacks that can last several days, including dizziness, lights and spots before the eyes, nausea and irritability, with sometimes a level of pain that can completely immobilise the sufferer. Recent evidence has shown that complementary treatment – osteopathy, physiotherapy, acupuncture or homeopathy – has resulted in a large measure of success in terminating some forms of migraine.
The cluster headache
If an attack comes on suddenly, occurring sometimes several times in the day, with the pain starting behind one nostril and spreading behind the eye, this is often called a cluster headache, the causes of which are still unknown. But, in many cases, it often becomes clear that the headache can be diagnosed to be of an origin that is treatable by us.
The Hatfield Practice treats the cause…….not the symptoms.
So often headaches are treated with painkillers or other drugs. These bring relief but the cause remains untreated. Unless the cause is an infection of the sinuses, an allergy, or maybe a visual problem corrected with glasses, researchers have found that, in many cases, there is a relationship between the spinal column and headaches.
We are trained to look for the spinal nerve stress – or vertebral problems – that lie behind many headaches.
After identifying spinal nerve stress, the practitioner uses specific treatment to correct the condition and relieve the stress. When this is accomplished, the body is able to restore itself to normality.
This freeing of spinal stress, particularly to the cervical spine or neck, could bring lasting relief to those whose quality of life is undermined by severe or persistent headaches.
Our treatments are not, like the aspirin, a temporary headache relief. It is primarily a diagnostic and corrective technique for mechanical disorders of the spine, where the causes of headache are so often found.