Conditions

Neck Pain and Headaches

Neck Pain

Neck pain is a very common issue that is increasingly present with the postures, activities, and stress of modern lifestyles. Like back pain, it is caused by postural, repetitive, or traumatic stress to the muscles, joints, ligaments, discs, and nerves. It is also common to have ongoing neck issues after a whiplash or concussion injury. In these cases, hands-on therapy for relief combined with exercise therapy usually achieves best results by trying to fix lingering causes of symptoms related to past trauma.

Headaches

Most headaches can be classified into migraines, tension-type headaches, and cervicogenic headaches. Chiropractic care is particularly helpful for tension-type and cervicogenic headaches by using hands-on therapies to reduce stress on muscles, joints, and sensitized nerves. Chronic or reoccurring cervicogenic and tension-type headaches often have underlying issues that contribute to them, so combining hands-on and exercise therapies can often help more than one or the other alone.

Causes of Neck Pain

Neck pain can be caused by direct trauma, such as whiplash, repetitive stress, or postural strain to the cervical spine. While muscle and joint-related neck pain is most common, neck pain can also be caused by nerve, ligament, and disc issues. Chronic or reoccurring neck pain often has more than one tissue type involved, and tends to benefit from both hands-on therapies to muscles and joints, as well as exercise approaches such as posture retraining, strengthening or mobility exercises, and muscle control retraining exercises in the case of chronic whiplash.

Causes of Headaches

Headaches are known to have many contributing factors, and identifying each trigger can be difficult. With tension-type headaches, it is mostly caused by tightness of the surrounding neck, head, jaw, and shoulder muscles that builds to the point of causing pain and headaches. With cervicogenic headaches, there is muscle as well as joint-related issues that contribute to headaches. Chiropractors are able to treat both of these headaches by identifying the tissue source of the headache, then working to reduce tightness or restriction in the area involved.

Strain to one or more muscles of the neck, usually following repetitive, traumatic, or postural loads.
Chiropractors are able to use soft tissue therapies, and exercises like posture modification, mobility, and strengthening to help with these types of injuries.
A sprain to the ligaments or joint capsules of the neck. This usually takes more force than a strain, such as a fall, whiplash, or car accident.
Treatment often involves hands on therapy in addition to exercise therapy to help support ligaments through the healing process.
Injury or irritation to the joints in the neck. This is a very common type of acute and chronic low back pain, and can be caused by either postural, repetitive, or traumatic loads. Often this type of pain is felt close to the midline of the spine, and can radiate into the upper shoulders or mid back as an achy pain. This issue can also contribute to headaches.
Chiropractors frequently treat this type of neck pain by using joint-specific therapies like manipulation, and mobilization. This type of neck pain also responds well to certain exercise therapies like posture modification, mobility, strengthening, and muscle control exercises.
Whiplash is often present after a sudden acceleration-deceleration mechanism. Your chiropractor will classify your degree of whiplash based on the tissues involved, the severity, and the functional issues.
Whiplash can often take longer to heal than neck strains or sprains alone. Newer research shows that specific muscle function issues are present in almost everyone after whiplash, and that these muscle issues can largely be retrained with certain muscle control exercises. Using these newer treatment protocols, Chiropractors are often able to relieve pain and improve function in whiplash disorders faster than using treatments for other types of neck pain alone.
Disc injuries include disc bulges, and herniations. Although disc-related injuries can be more difficult to treat and have a longer recovery time, they still respond well to treatment in the majority of cases.
Treatment of disc issues often requires disc-specific assessment and exercise therapy for best results. This usually involves the use of directional preference, neurodynamic, posture, and cervical strengthening exercises as the main components of treatment.
Cervicogenic means “from the neck”, so cervicogenic headaches are headaches that stem from the muscles and tissues in the cervical spine. This is most often the very top joints and muscles of the spine.
Cervicogenic headaches differ from tension-type in that they are also joint-based. They are often felt at the base of the skull (usually on one side) just above your neck, and are known to radiate upward into the skull and into the temples. Often with cervicogenic headaches your range of movement in your neck will also be limited or reduced.
Chiropractors are well positioned to treat cervicogenic headaches, since they are experts at assessing and treating neck muscles and joints.
Tension-type headaches involve a build up of muscle tension in the muscles of the neck, shoulder girdle, and skull. They are often described as a band of tension around both temples and head. Soft tissue therapies that Chiropractors perform are often very helpful to reduce this muscle tension and relieve these headaches.
If chronic, there is often a postural, muscle strength, or muscle control issue that is contributing to tension-type headaches. It is also very common for high periods of stress to lead to tension-type headaches.
Osteoarthritis of the spine is more common as we age, and overlaps with other issues as it effects our joints and disc space. Treatment often involves manual therapy for relief, and an exercise plan to reduce progression and provide muscular support the arthritic joints.