Migraines are a frequent ailment that chiropractors treat. Half of all Americans would say they have headaches at least once a year, and migraines are the most prevalent form of headache our patients report. They are neurological conditions whose symptoms can be severely disabling.
An intense throbbing pain, generally solely on a single side of the head, is a classic migraine symptom. Side effects often include soreness behind the affected eye. They often cause other symptoms, such as numbness, tingling, and sensitivity to sound and light. Auras, visual disturbances that often accompany migraine attacks, affect around a quarter of those who suffer from these headaches. They can hinder patients’ ability to go about their daily lives since they can last anywhere between four to seventy-two hours.
It is essential to identify the underlying cause of migraines. It must be fixed if a bone, nerve, disc, or muscle has a mechanical or structural issue. These headaches might be caused, for instance, by pressure on the nerves in your neck that results from misaligned vertebrae. Restoring spinal alignment is the solution to the problem. Our chiropractors have extensive training in this area. If you suffer from them, it’s important to determine and address the underlying cause, which might be anything from a physical issue to a hormone imbalance to a particular cuisine.
How We Treat Migraines
Ways We Treat Migraines
Comprehensive Consultation and Exam
To get started on the road to recovery, each new patient first meets with a doctor for a comprehensive consultation and physical examination. They are interested in hearing your account of this issue. To what extent have your migraines affected your life? How frequently do they occur? How has this affected your life, exactly? We can better pinpoint your needs and provide informed recommendations for treatment after we have a firm grasp on how your ailment has impacted every aspect of your life.
The exam will begin immediately following the consultation. You will undergo a battery of neurologic, orthopedic, and functional mobility tests to assess your spinal cord and neurological system’s present state of health. Subluxation (an improperly moving or misaligned vertebra) may be at the foundation of your condition, so we’ll also look at your spine. We’ll check your posture, too, because it may be a component of why your issue has persisted for so long. At your next appointment, your doctor will go through all of the tests and results with you to get a full picture of your health and the next steps that need to be taken.
Specific Chiropractic Care
We prioritize chiropractic treatments as a primary method of treating migraines. The three cervical vertebrae, or neck bones, are given extra care because of their proximity to the brain. At these vertebral levels, the nerves exit the spinal column and ascend to the brain and skull. Subluxation (a misalignment) of these vertebrae can aggravate the nerves that supply the brain, causing discomfort.
Alignment of the spine is restored by chiropractic treatment, relieving nerve pressure and facilitating recovery. Chronic issues sometimes need a series of chiropractic adjustments to resolve. It’s important to allow your body the period it needs to recover. The issue likely did not arise overnight. Therefore, we shouldn’t anticipate a miraculous fix to the problem in the same amount of time. Nevertheless, many people who suffer from them feel better quickly.
Massage Therapy and Soft Tissue Work
Chronic muscular tension is a major contributor to the development of migraines. The pain of them can be exacerbated by tension in the head muscles, particularly the forehead, side, and back. Our clinic strongly emphasizes soft tissue work, and we have a wide variety of techniques at our disposal to achieve this goal.
The stiffness in your neck and head might be eased with a massage. When it comes to headaches, our qualified massage therapists are pros in pinpointing adhesions and trigger points, which are often the root cause. No need to worry if massage isn’t your thing; our doctors are also well-versed in other soft tissue treatments like the Graston and Active Release methods if that’s what you’re looking for. These eliminate adhesions that cause symptoms and return muscle function to normal.
Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan
It’s been shown that fixing postural issues will help migraine sufferers recover faster and better. Most cases of head and neck discomfort may be traced back to poor posture, with the forward head position being the most prevalent culprit. The neck’s joints and muscles bear excessive strain when the head is forward from the shoulders, leading to various health issues.
Fortunately, our business has a sizable fitness center where employees may work on their form and technique. Your trainer and doctor will create a personalized fitness regimen for you to follow between the clinic and home appointments. Regularity is essential. By implementing these exercises, we are assisting people in learning how to properly balance their spinal muscles, which is essential for correct alignment and posture. It is useful for treating issues like migraines and preventing them in the future.
Cervical Spinal Decompression
Decompression therapy uses a gentle and controlled stretching force on the neck to open disc gaps and produce a pressure drop effect inside the disc. This can aid in drawing nutrients, fluid, or bulging disc parts back into the intervertebral disc where it belongs. With less strain on the neck’s nerve roots, this retraction may relieve neck, shoulder, arm, and hand discomfort, tingling, and numbness. In addition, it might make the whole of your neck more flexible and at ease.
Decompression treatment is more advanced than typical traction because it can detect resistance and relax to adjust the tension accordingly. A common side effect of traditional traction therapy is tightening the neck muscles in response to the therapy’s repeated pulling motion. With decompression treatment, the muscle reaction to the separation is minimized by alternating between stretching and relaxation.
Deep Tissue Laser
Our therapeutic protocol revolves around the use of a deep tissue Laser. It’s a painless, non-invasive, tried-and-true method for relieving headache discomfort with no risk to your health. Many patients report feeling significantly better after only a few sessions. Pain is reduced, muscle strength is improved, and range of motion is expanded thanks to the cutting-edge FDA-approved lasers and other therapies employed in our program. In particular, the anti-inflammatory effects of these therapies aid in reducing swelling and restoring normal function.
Acupuncture
The goal of acupuncture treatment is to normalize your body’s flow of life force or chi. It also purports to dispel the painful bad energy plaguing you. From the standpoint of Western medicine, acupuncture activates multiple bodily systems. It stimulates a recuperative process.
The body is broken up into different “zones” and “pressure points” for acupuncture. Various acupuncture points are used for different conditions. These acupuncture sites tend to be close to nerve endings. Needling causes the production of feel-good chemicals like endorphins by stimulating nearby nerves. Migraine and tension headaches are alleviated by activating the immunological and circulatory systems.
Nutritional Supplementation
The role of diet in migraines is an important one that has to be examined. It’s crucial to figure out which foods are causing them for you and stop eating them. Some popular migraine-inducing foods include red wine, cheese, and chocolate. The quality of your life might be greatly enhanced by avoiding whichever of these is the actual trigger for your headaches.
Migraine headache relief supplements might be another option. It’s been found that migraine sufferers often have insufficient vitamin B2, vitamin D, and magnesium levels. You can get them from whole foods or take a supplement. But remember, when picking a supplement, the source matters. Ask your doctor about which supplements might be best for you to take.
Common Migraine Triggers
Stress
Migraines are often brought on by emotional or mental strain. The pressures of daily existence are overwhelming. But if you get them, you have the extra stress of wondering when your next episode will hit. This repeating pattern is psychologically, physically, and emotionally draining. In the long run, this mental anguish might weaken your immune system and increase your susceptibility to illness. In light of this, you must take steps to recognize and control the sources of stress in your life. Meditation, physical activity, enough rest, and chiropractic care are just a few of the usual methods to deal with stress.
Changes in or an Irregular Sleep Schedule
Quantity and quality of sleep are often ignored yet are crucial to our health. During Deep sleep, the body repairs and renews tissues, including the brain. For lack of a better way to say it, sleep is when the body repairs itself. A lack of regular sleep often brings on migraines. In fact, between 4 and 9 a.m. is the most common time for them to strike. Those who already have trouble sleeping are considerably more likely to suffer from them because of this.
Hormones
A migraine headache strikes a woman three times as often as a man. Hormones and how they vary could be a major factor in this difference. One such hormone is estrogen, found only in females and whose variations have been related to migraine attacks. Migraines are common when estrogen levels are low and can be worsened by a sudden reduction in estrogen.
Caffeine and Alcohol
There is still a lack of understanding as to why alcoholic beverages seem to bring on migraine attacks, and the underlying cause may vary from person to person. It’s possible, for instance, that alcohol is the root cause of migraines, either because of the chemicals it’s broken down into, or because of the diuretic impact (increased need to pee) that can result from that.
Because caffeine may be both a preventative measure and a reactivating factor for them, it can be tricky for people who suffer from them to determine how much to consume. Many people get relief from headaches by drinking coffee, which is also included in many over-the-counter medications since it prevents the chemical adenosine from attaching to brain receptors during an attack. However, contrary to popular belief, some migraine sufferers claim that coffee triggers their painful headaches.
Changes in the Weather
Some people are more susceptible to migraines than others because of fluctuations in serotonin levels, which changes in the weather can trigger. A headache brought on by another factor might be made much worse by weather-related stimuli.
Migraine sufferers who believe the weather plays a role in their condition are entitled to feel frustrated. The weather is something you cannot alter. Migraine headaches can be debilitating, but you can make efforts to reduce their occurrence by identifying the weather changes that trigger them.
Diet and Dehydration
An individual’s diet may significantly impact their health and well-being. You will eventually reach your health potential if you maintain a healthy diet. On the other hand, eating improperly on a regular basis may wreck your health and cause various other problems. If you frequently suffer from migraines, you should investigate whether a certain food or beverage is the cause. Red wine, artificial sweeteners, cheese, cured meats, chocolate, and a wide range of other foods are just a few examples of the numerous foods that can cause headaches.
Light and Smell
Many migraine victims say that certain odors, especially those that are novel or overpowering, bring on their attacks. Perfume, in particular, has been implicated as a culprit several times. During an attack, roughly half of those who suffer migraines say they cannot tolerate certain odors. Migraine sufferers are the only persons who experience this symptom, termed osmophobia.
Migraine sufferers frequently experience light sensitivity, known as photophobia, and is used as a diagnostic criterion. During an attack, dim light might be too much for 80 to 96 percent of migraine victims with photophobia. Migraine patients often have heightened sensitivity to light, even between attacks.
Medication Overuse
It’s concerning how many prescriptions people in the United States are using. We only account for around 5% of the global population as a nation, but we use over half of all prescription drugs. Drugs are created to affect the body’s biology to achieve their intended results. Alterations in bodily functioning that come from this are called side effects. Migraines are a very common adverse reaction to numerous drugs.
FAQs
Can you Visit a Chiropractor With Migraines?
Yes! Chiropractic professionals are trained to spot spinal misalignments, which frequently affect the upper neck region. This region of the spine has nerves that go throughout the brain; if those nerves are inflamed, pain may be felt throughout those nerve pathways. A safe, gentle treatment for them brought on by spinal imbalance is chiropractic.
Do Migraines Result From a Misaligned Neck?
Cervicogenic headaches, which originate in the neck, are often the result of spinal misalignment, both locally (when a single vertebral segment is misaligned and fixated) and globally (when the neck’s natural curve has been lost).
Do migraines harm the brain?
As one might expect, prolonged exposure to pain over weeks, months or even years is bad for mental health. Constant suffering can alter your neural circuitry in intractable ways. However, even persistent headaches may be defeated with the correct health practices. Reduce your migraine frequency and severity with chiropractic care, healthy eating, enough water intake, and stress management.
Does Massage Help Migraines?
Although medication is typically the first line of defense against and treatment for migraines, massage therapy has shown promise for certain patients. That’s great news for anyone who has experienced discomfort from taking medicine for the headaches.
How Quickly Can I Get Rid of My Migraine?
The simplest solution to solve this problem if your migraines are brought on by spinal misalignment is to have a chiropractor realign your spine. As a result, there is often immediate alleviation available. If light sensitivity is a symptom of your migraines, getting some shut-eye might be extremely helpful in alleviating the pain.
