Getting Beyond Headaches and Migraines to Living an Optimized Life!
Common scenarios for seeking care:
- You’ve had this pain for a while and have seen other doctors to try and find a solution. You did some digging and found what wellness care research has confirmed for a long time.
- You might be experiencing this pain for the first time and it’s alarming, so you’re seeking expert advice from a natural and holistic source.
- You might have had this pain, and while it resolved itself for a while, it has now returned. You’re seeking more sustainable solutions.
- You may have heard from a family member, a friend, or a colleague about our unique approach to helping people with this type of symptom.
Our Holistic Approach Looks Deeper Than Your Symptom Might Appear!
- In looking at headaches and migraines from a neurological perspective, it has been found through extensive research that pain is mostly an output signal from the brain. This means that the brain is interpreting stress in its environment (inside or out) and reacting to protect itself from that stressor.
- The stress patterns that can take place in the spinal cord’s attachment sites to the vertebral column can create global stress on the entire physiology, which can lead to various symptoms for different people.
- Symptoms can usually be traced back to an area of subluxation or misalignment. These constricted regions in the body-mind can occur between adjacent vertebra, cranial bones, ribs or joints in the upper or lower extremities.
- It is very rare that a physical symptom doesn’t have an emotional/mental element that goes along with it.
Neuroscience research has found that by calming the nervous system’s response to its defensive posturing and stress through chiropractic adjustments, helped migraine headaches subside considerably.
How We Clear Your Headaches and Migraines:
- Check your posture and neurological tension and stress patterns. We’ll free up the midline stress through gentle and advanced tonal chiropractic. This will relax the body-mind considerably and allow us to dive in deeper.
- Evaluate and balance key joints throughout the skeletal system through Zero Balancing. This will integrate the relaxation response further and free up areas that are tight, bunched up and restricting natural energy currents.
- Rule out stress in the organ system that can cause radiating pain to muscles and joints through the visceral-muscular reflexes. A common example is most people that experience a heart episode feel pain shooting down the left arm. Regarding headaches, it can sometimes be an indicator of a part of the brain’s structures that needs nutritional support.
Let’s dive into some of the physical aspects that cause headaches and migraines.
Physical Keystone Areas We Check – where you might be subluxated or constricted:
- The Vagus Nerve – The “10th cranial nerve” exits the brain under the skull on both sides, close to the ears. It is the longest cranial nerve in the body and responsible for controlling most unconscious bodily functions, such as blood flow, breathing, heart rate, digestion, and immune responses. Through gentle touch and expertise, this important landmark can be regulated and brought back to its proper tone.
- The Occiput (lower skull bone) – This important landmark is one of the main anchoring sites for the entire spinal cord, just as a guitar string is anchored to the neck of the guitar. The tensions that are held at the occiput, either through being overly flexed (very common in our smartphone culture) or by being rotated or torqued, can create pain responses, and impede blood flow throughout the head and neck.
- The 1st Vertebra “The Atlas” – This bone is one of the most important to clear out due to its proximity to the brain stem. When it is constricted, it can cause many symptoms, such as headaches, migraines, and neck pain. Other symptoms can include loss of balance, dizziness, ringing in the ears, decreased breathing, and uncoordinated heartbeats. Being overly concerned about the future can lead to a posturing at the Atlas, generally a pattern below our awareness, like the posture we hold when “we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
- The 2nd, 3rd and 4th Vertebrae – In response to headaches and migraines – and why chiropractic is a trusted source to clear it out – is the fact that the vertebral arteries supply the head and neck with blood flow. These arteries run up through the sides of the neck vertebrae and can become constricted with misalignments and muscular tension. These upper- to mid- neck bones feel freeing to get adjusted, as the person usually feels more in touch with their body. We tend to hold tension in these landmarks when we’re overly cerebral or heady. Think of it as having so much energy swirling in your head that it pops a fuse in your fuse box below it.
- The 5th, 6th and 7th vertebrae – These lower neck bones are areas that tend to show up when we’re overly stressed, frustrated or angry. There’s a certain posturing that accompanies this distortion pattern and is sometimes associated with tension in the tailbone. An exaggerated example is someone posturing as they are preparing for a fight. Just as the upper vertebrae, the vertebral arteries -the main source for blood supply to the head and neck – run up through these bones and can become restricted in blood flow volume. This directly affects the brain’s supply and triggers the onset of headaches and migraines.
- Upper Rib Case – The upper 6 pair of ribs are attached directly to the vertebral column and the breastplate. The upper 2 ribs have a unique shape and function, and are attached to the clavicle, or collarbone, as well as the lower neck and upper back vertebra. The movement of all the joints that include these connections are vital to clear to allow the neck to move freely and uninhibited, as well as being important for respiration. If you’re not breathing properly at rest – which we do about 22,000 times a day- you’re not receiving enough oxygen into the brain’s structures. This in turn will trigger headaches and migraines. A sign of ribs being fixated or stuck is a sharp and stabbing pain in the torso while attempting to take in a good inhalation.
- Nutritional Deficiencies and Organ Dysfunction – If headaches and migraines persist, it’s important to check in to the health and vitality of the organ system throughout the body. Through muscle testing, we’ll rule out hidden sources that can trigger headaches. Some common examples are certain food groups that are stressing digestive organs, upper and lower sinus issues, and blood sugar level imbalance. You can find out more about muscle testing here.
Let’s consider the emotional-mental aspects of headaches and migraines. Due to high levels of stress, your physiology gets revved up, sometimes referred to as sympathetic stress. When left unbalanced, this stress response can lead to constricted blood flow, decrease breathing, lack of sleep and anxiety. These automatic functions of the body-mind create long-term stress and can cause multiple symptoms, including headaches and migraines.
The key to your success
By helping you shift your focus from only achieving your desired outcome (make this pain go away!), to learning new skills and behaviors to grow and adapt to stress, you will find your goals met and even exceeded. As a culture, we are so focused on the pain that it distracts us from what else might be lurking underneath it.
We are committed to guiding you along a path to find freedom and ease!