Persistent Nagging Headaches, or Worse...

Case study by Jack Day, Elite Senior Myotherapist & Franchise Owner

Headaches, we’ve all had them at some point in time and we can all agree they can really take the shine off your day. Unfortunately, this is a daily reality for a lot of people. It’s hard to do basic tasks when dealing with a thumping headache. Some extraordinary people deal with these while at work, day in and day out. Personally, I don’t know how they do it!

This has been the case of one of our clients at our Hawthorn East clinic; a middle-aged lady, working and studying on the side. Headaches can be caused from several factors, some of which aren’t pigeonholed into the musculoskeletal area. But most of the time, there is a link between the headache and some musculoskeletal dysfunction. In most cases, if you can alleviate some of the many factors that contribute to the headache, you will be able to stop subsequent episodes.

In the case with our patient, we determined a change of chairs at work and university was contributing to her headaches. It was the poor ‘desk posture’ (upper cross syndrome) that she would unknowingly slip into when sitting for longer periods of time, that was putting strain on her body and causing these headaches. We were able to treat the headache by releasing her muscles and joints, successively providing relief from her pain. Sounds straight forward and simple, right?

The next week she presented with headaches again, in a similar type of headache pattern. After some testing we revealed that her headache pain was linked to her jaw. Jaw symptoms can be a bit more difficult to manage than more common headaches which can stem from the muscles and joints around your neck. Using a combination of exercises, dry needling, meditation before sleep (headaches in the morning can be liked to bruxism – clenching at night) and spine posture awareness we had some success against the new breed of headaches. With our treatment, we were now managing multiple areas of her life and avoiding things that we knew would cause more harm than good.

The chronic nature of these headaches and sometimes migraines, isn’t as simple as a one size fits all. There are a number of factors to be considered, including: sleep, nutrition/diet, stress levels, mindfulness, ability to relax, retraining posture and conditioning the body for long periods of work. With consideration of all these things, we were able to gradually regain control of our patient’s headaches. We used a step by step process to focus on each part of our patient’s daily life, and put in place interventions, enabling her to get back to where she wanted to be.

If you are a regular sufferer of headaches or you know of someone who is, take control of those symptoms, come and see us at Elite Myotherapy Hawthorn East.