Headache is a frequent complaint often treated successfully by chiropractors. Headache is actually a symptom, much like back pain, which may be caused by a large variety of conditions. Patients presenting with headache will rarely have a serious or life threatening cause, however, frequent headaches, do have a significant impact on the quality of life of individuals as well as their families.
Genetic factors often play a role in headaches such as migraine and cluster headaches. Other factors include work environment, stress, repetitive tasks, dehydration and so forth.
The three most common causes of frequent headache are:
- Muscle tension/neck headaches
- Analgesic overuse headache
Almost 80% of the general population will experience tension type headaches and up to 16% will have migraines. Neck related headaches are common in almost 20% of the population.
A diagnosis is reached in most patients after a thorough history and neurological as well as general examinations are carried out. Occasionally, CT or MRI scans are necessary to exclude serious pathologies.
This service is available at our clinic where a Consultant Neurologist is on staff.
Most patients suffering with neck-shoulder pain will also experience some degree of headache.
Chiropractors can often detect the underlying cause of these postural related headache types and treat them successfully with spinal manipulation, postural advice and exercises.
Headache may be due to a variety of overlapping factors and multi-disciplinary care is often required. At our clinic we have the largest Headache Clinic in the City, each experienced practitioner working in an integrated manner with other members of the team.
A user friendly electronic instrument that contains the entire headache classification including sub-groups, diagnostic criteria, IHS and WHO codes can be found at: www.ihs-classification.org/en