Can chiropractors fix tension headaches?
Can chiropractic, specifically upper cervical chiropractic, help with tension headaches? Yes, it can. We see very often that upper cervical chiropractic care can help people with tension headaches, even people who have been suffering from these headaches for years. There is an interesting research paper that was published in 1998, and it shows what people were doing that’s helping with tension headaches.
A tension headache is the type of headache that feels like a band of tension pushing in on your brain, which is very uncomfortable. Headaches we think are one of the worst kinds of pain because it’s difficult to concentrate and focus. The research paper said “The highest-rated items,” the items that helped the most with tension style headaches, “were upper cervical manipulations, upper cervical soft tissue therapy, and neck stretching exercises.” That’s what we do here at HealthWorks: A Family Wellness Center.
What is upper cervical? Upper cervical is the very top of your spine. Looking at a model of the base of your skull and the top of your neck, we can pinpoint where that is. Your head sits right on top, surrounding the brain. The lower base of your skull is your cerebellum, the bottom part of your brain. Sitting right beneath that is your Atlas (C1), which is the upper cervical region. When Atlas (C1) is misaligned, it creates tension through the spinal cord and the brain that can create all types of issues because the nerves are compromised in that area.
Can chiropractic help head pressure?
The effects of having a misaligned C1 in the body can be very far-reaching, and one of the things that it does cause is headaches. What we do as precision upper cervical chiropractic chiropractors is we look very carefully at what’s going on in this upper cervical area of your spine. If this area is misaligned, we do a gentle and precise adjustment to realign that area back to normal. After this adjustment, we often see that people have a reduction in the headaches that they have been having, even if it’s long-standing headaches that they might have had for years or haven’t gotten very good results with other methods in the past.
Upper cervical has a long history of helping with headaches and research shows that. The one thing that worked the best was the upper cervical manipulation, which we call upper cervical adjustment. To watch the full video, click here.