Christy Flick: Headaches can be so painful and they can take just a lot of quality from your life. Headaches can be horrible. I’m Dr. Christy Flick.
Jennifer Taylor: I’m Dr. Jennifer Taylor.
Christy Flick: We’re with HealthWorks: A Family Wellness Center in Plano, Texas.
Jennifer Taylor: Here’s how headaches can actually happen. There is a mechanical reason for them and that’s what upper cervical chiropractors like those of us at HealthWorks really look at. This right here is the upper cervical area. This is the back of your neck.
Christy Flick: Right here.
Jennifer Taylor: Right here.
Christy Flick: Back of the head.
Jennifer Taylor: Okay, your cerebellum right here is inside your brain, and this right here is your brainstem responsible for all of your heart function, responsible for respiration. It’s also responsible for all those muscles that keep you upright all day long. Kind of important. Then we have, this is C1 or your Atlas.
Christy Flick: That’s right here.
Jennifer Taylor: Uh-huh (affirmative). Then we have C2 that comes right up and this is like a whole functional model right here that this is exactly what surrounds your brainstem.
Jennifer Taylor: Well, when this area goes out of alignment, it can actually put pressure on the brainstem. It causes a whole host of postural changes that make everything really tight more on one side.
Christy Flick: Yeah, all the way head to toe. So this area is so important to the function of your body for you to live and to work that if it has any sort of irritation to it, your whole body responds to that and really seizes up all the way down to your feet. One leg will become shorter. Your body really, really tries to protect that area as much as it can.
Jennifer Taylor: So, how many headaches start here at the base of the skull and come up and come into your eyes and, and create that tension and that tightness, I mean, this, you know, headaches can really make a good day terrible.
Christy Flick: Oh, or if they’re bad enough, you have to even skip that day. You spend the day in bed with an ice pack on your head. I mean, that can … Or, maybe you have to get up, maybe you have kids, but you can’t, you’re not giving them 100% like you really want to because your head hurts. I mean you can’t, you can’t be expected to be at 100% if you have a headache. It’s just impossible.
Jennifer Taylor: Let’s look at some of the statistics, and a lot of this it needs to be looked at.
Christy Flick: Let’s look at some statistics. We love these statistics because they really mirrored what we saw in our own office. In the research, people who were under chiropractic care, so they had a chiropractic adjustment, this area of their spine was taken care of right here that Dr. Taylor was just talking about, they had a 36% decrease in pain medication use. They didn’t have to take Advil or Tylenol or any analgesic as much as they used to have to, they had a 36% decrease in intensity. Even if they had a headache, it wasn’t quite as bad as it used to be. But here’s the big one. They had a 69% decrease in the number of headaches that they had overall.
Jennifer Taylor: I mean, that could change your entire month.
Christy Flick: Yeah. Your entire life. I mean basically 70% less headaches. And when they did have them, they were less intense and they had to take less pain medication, which is amazing. That’s really what we, what we see played out in our office too. A lot of patients that ended up never having a headache again, and even if they do have a headache, it would be a lot less intense or less often. So, man, talk about quality of life that’s a big deal.
Jennifer Taylor: Yes, absolutely.
Christy Flick: So, if this makes sense to you or you’d like to know more, let us know. We are happy to share this information with you and your family.
Jennifer Taylor: Just comment below.
HealthWorks: A Family Wellness center is a chiropractic and wellness center located in Plano, Texas. Our chiropractors, Dr. Christy Flick and Dr. Jennifer Taylor, have been helping patients function better since starting private practice in 2005. For information about this article or other chiropractic questions, please contact our office at 972-612-1800.