Headaches – Don’t Reach for Aspirin

One of the most common reason people seek chiropractic care is for headaches. When you have a headache, your eyes hurt, your forehead pounds, your neck is sore and tight and your scalp feels as if it’s being slowly removed. Lights bother you and noise sets your teeth on edge. Then there are your children, the house, dinner, your spouse, and the daily demand of life. You would like to stop the world and get off!

Headaches have been sold to the public as a disease to be “treated.” Millions of dollars in advertising are spent annually on the benefits of drugs for headaches. We’ve bought into this carefully contrived thinking. Let’s look at this from a different perspective. The word headache simply means ache in the head. It’s not a disease. It’s a pain- a SYMPTOM. I’m not making light of the symptom: it can be severe and debilitating.

There are different types of headaches- migraines, cluster, tension, occipital, and sinus. Each seems to have a different pattern, location, severity and of course, a different drug to deal each one. This is a manufacturer’s reality. The pharmaceutical industry would like you to believe and accept the illusion that all of these headaches need to be treated. Why? Money. There are billions of dollars of profit at stake! There is no consideration given to the reason why you have the headaches.

Most people are so busy treating their pain they forget that pain has a reason for being. A headache is your body “talking” back to you and you need to interpret that language. It’s a signal that your body’s having a difficult time handling something and the vast majority of headaches are found at the base of the head, in the region of the temples or over the eyes.

Chiropractors have found that many headaches signify a distortion of some of the vertebrae of the neck area affecting the function of the nervous system. You’d be surprised to learn that 85-95 percent of all subluxations I see in adults can be traced to birth or childhood. It is something that your body has been forced to deal with your whole life, and eventually it punches the clock and says "I've had it!"

These subluxations affect the manner in which the nervous system transmits information and can be very catastrophic. When this occurs, certain neck muscles are called in to play to protect the nervous system from damage, thus you experience a “tension” headache. Very often, the pain is transmitted to the face and people think it’s their sinuses at fault. They reach for sinus medication-and the profit cascade begins!
Then there’s the pounding pain in the temple-a migraine. Again-different drugs. And the headaches which come in clusters? More drugs!

Some headaches are not caused by subluxations. They can be cause by wrong diet, poor nutrition, and hypoglycemia. I see many of these in my practice. Some are caused by an aneurysm, a disease process, toxicity or a tumor.

No headaches should be taken lightly. Something is not right. Find that something. A trip to your family chiropractor will provide a comprehensive examination to help determine the reason for your headaches. He/She may also provide you with nutritional advice to ease the headaches.

Thank you for your time,

Dr. Travis

For more information, visit my website. www.mytulsachiro.com