Understanding Migraines
How to take back control of your health and reduce or eliminate your need for medication.
What Is A Migraine?
If you have landed on this page, chances are you are looking for a non-medication approach to migraine relief. First off, we want to say that we feel for you. Migraines are the worst! Whatever they keep you from (being a mom, enjoying the mountains, a successful career, etc.) we want to help you get back to that. This page is meant to provide you with hope that you are not crazy, you are not untreatable and these migraines don’t have to control your life.
So, what is a migraine?
Most people with migraines (or migraine) will experience a one-sided severe pain often described as a throbbing sensation. Migraines are commonly seen to have pain with a combination of nausea, light or sound sensitivity, visual disturbances and even numbness in the extremities.
Migraines are currently managed through the means of avoiding triggers along with preventative and/or abortive medications. The underlying cause of migraines is largely unknown, but we do know that migraine sufferers are 2-3x more likely to be female and family history is the strongest predictor.
Because there is still much to be discovered in the world of migraines it is important to do two things:
First – the most conservative treatments should always come first
Second – all sources of pain should be evaluated in order to guide the proper treatment
But is that what our healthcare system does? – Keep reading!
Why Does The Current Approach Fail?
It is important to understand that the neck is frequently an overlooked source of migraine symptoms
When a patient presents with headaches or migraines the initial diagnosis will be based off of that patient’s symptoms. This means that we use X-ray, MRI and/or CT to make sure you aren’t suffering from anything life threatening, but when those tests are negative our system leaves you wandering.
It’s a frustrating process.
Many people never find a straight answer as to where their pain is coming from.
Does this sound familiar:
Medication after medication that hopes to reduce the frequency or intensity of your pain. If that medication works it’s either too costly and/or comes with side-effects that make you feel even worse.
Don’t worry, there is hope. We have treated over 600 people with all types of headaches and migraines successfully without any medications. Most people come to us thinking they are a lost cause, nothing can help, they’ve tried everything. If that sounds like you, your’e in the right place.
Believe it or not: headaches, dizziness, jaw pain, nausea, light/sound sensitivities and visual disturbances all come about because of restrictions in the neck.
What kind of treatment do we provide?
In our clinic, we are doctors of physical therapy. We provide full examinations of the body’s movement, but for headache and migraine patients we look more specifically at the neck. We then evaluate where your pain is coming from, or to put it another way, we discover “which tissue is the issue.” We want to educate you on each structure, i.e the joint, muscle, connective tissue, or nerve, what their role is, and which ones are contributing most to your pain.
We provide hands on treatment, meaning joint mobilizations, to improve movement and treat trigger points in the muscles. We can also provide dry needling to those trigger points, if needed. These treatments take stress off of the nerves that are ultimately sending pain signals to your brain, causing your headache and migraine symptoms. We can then guide you through specific exercises that you do on your own to maintain the movement improvements made during each session. We do not provide medications or Botox, and many of our patients wean off of their medication entirely.
