Oh, My Aching Head

Headaches and neck pain image.

It’s back again ~ that all too familiar throbbing pain in your head. You suffer from them regularly, but do you know what actually causes your chronic headaches?

The pain you feel when you have a headache is not located in your brain, even though it feels that way. The pain is actually sensed by nerve endings located in your head and neck. Many types of events, inside and outside of your body, serve as “triggers” that can bring on a headache. Knowing what most often triggers your headaches can help you avoid them.

The most common triggers are emotional (stress, anger, anxiety), food-related (eating processed foods such as perserved sandwhich meats, alcohol, nuts and dairy products), hormonal (birth control pills, menstruation, menopause), environmental (noise, air travel, changes in temperature or humidity), or physiological (illness, skipping a meal, overtiredness).

A study, conducted by Dr. Eisenberg at Harvard University, reported that chiropractors are the most common alternative health provider consulted for headache pain. Chiropractors are trained to locate and correct misalignments in the vertebrae in the upper spine and neck. These misalignments put pressure on adjacent nerves ~ pressure that can cause your headaches.

So, instead of reaching for the headaches pills the next time you feel a headache coming on, call our practice and have your spine checked instead!

Dr. Dan Asks some important questions of interest to Aiken residents - Chiropractor Aiken Dr. Dan Asks...

What's the difference between sick care and health care?
Sick care is largely about relieving or suppressing symptoms. Health care is about improving performance. While sick care is about how you feel, health care is about how you function. Sick care is what you do to treat an obvious problem, and health care is what you do to avoid the problem and advance your well-being.
How does headache medication find the headache?
It can't! Chiropractors know that when you ingest a drug and it enters your bloodstream it numbs or deadens your entire body. Chiropractic adjustments, on the other hand, are specific, targeted and delivered with precision.