Is there real hope for treatment resistant headaches?
I say YES. Especially if you are open to exploring the REAL root causes of your headaches.
I’m not going to bore you with statistics. I’m going to assume that you are aware of the extent that headaches can decrease productivity and the quality of life.
Headaches can really ruin your day. They can be a mild background nuisance that slowly erodes the quality of your life, or the kind of headaches that make you want to hide in a dark room for days.
Chronic headaches can also rob you of a significant amount of energy, leaving you too exhausted to do the things you love.
Chronic headache pain is very common, and also very, very misunderstood. Migraines are a perfect example.
It can seem like there is no escape from a headache. Pills can offer temporary relief, but they won’t work for long unless you address the real root cause, especially when it comes to chronic pain.
To add insult to injury, many patients don’t really feel “heard” by their doctors.
Traditional Medicine Perspective
In the traditional medical paradigm, doctors tend to classify headaches the following way:
1. Secondary headaches: An organically caused headache is not a disease itself; rather it is a symptom of another disease or disorder.
These headaches are secondary/the result of head trauma, tumors, infections, high blood pressure, aneurysms, etc.
These conditions can be life-threatening so I do recommend immediate evaluation by a doctor or emergency department without delay if you are experiencing any of the symptoms I listed at the end of this blog.
2. Primary headaches: when it comes to chronic pain from primary headaches (headaches classified as tension, migraines, cluster, and so forth) this paradigm often isn’t very effective at getting to the core of what’s causing these headaches. The treatments tend to focus on pain/symptom relief.
Granted, there is some information out there about the causes (and treatment) of these types of headaches, but too often they don’t really get to the actual “cause of the cause” of the pain.
A good example of this is “stress management,” which doesn’t really address a SPECIFIC kind of stress in order to give someone a starting point to work with, because the term itself is imprecise, vague, and misused.
Even migraines and hormone-based headaches and the mechanisms of pain relief via drugs is still not well understood in many cases.
Why are hormones out of balance in the first place? To start, we have to ask the right questions. (read on to find out what I look for)
3. Psychological: Some even consider pain that has no obvious cause as not “legitimate” or “all in your head” (painkillers and anti-depressants are the “cure.”) Since we are not machines and our physical well-being is connected to our mind, emotions, past experiences, environment, and behavior, it doesn’t make sense to dismiss ANY kind of headache pain.
Your pain is real.
At Kardia chiropractic, I take a broader perspective. If you are experiencing pain, it’s real and “legit,” and I will listen and treat you with the respect you deserve.
Once we know that there are no life-threatening issues that need to be addressed immediately, we can start to go deeper into solving the mystery of chronic headache pain so that you can get on with your life!
Life’s too short for headaches. Instead of a limited and myopic option, let’s expand the perspective and de-mystify headaches.
The Heart Technique
I have a lot of experience with headaches. I’ve been called the “headache guru” and even though I think this title is a little over the top, (maybe “headache detective” is a better term) I gathered, over a long period of time, with many patients, my rules for understanding headaches. These rules are very specific, accurate and effective.
There are three key concepts I use when treating headaches:
• Location
• Cause
• Correction
In my 20+ years of treating headaches, if you can know, understand and correct these three things, you can get rid of your headaches.
Please understand that headaches are never one single thing. They are always complex and yes, fun for me to figure out, so I’m going to communicate the foundational rules I’ve discovered.
Location
Location is great place to get a general idea of where to begin to find the cause of your headaches.
• A headache behind the eyes is usually related to blood sugar.
• A headache at the back of the head is usually structural.
• The headache that exists on the top of the head is usually hormonal in nature.
• The headache on the sides of the head are usually stress related.
• A whole head in a vise/band around skull type of migraine headache is almost always emotional.
If your headache is in more than one place, just combine the causes based on the location of your headache. It’s a combination of them. Remember that this is just a generic starting list or a starting point. Nothing is written in stone.
This humble opinion is based on my personal experience.
Cause
Now we can talk about cause. We 4 have basic causes.
• Structure
• Hormones
• Stress
• Blood sugar
But these are not the root core causes. In my humble opinion, these basic causes are still symptoms. We need to look deeper. We need to discover the “causes behind these 4 causes.
To make things even more interesting, there can be more than one cause. Life itself is complex, and often several causes are interconnected.
Not only is life itself and the human body a complex machine in and of itself.. YOU are a extremely specific person living a very specific life. Your experiences are also unique, and leave a lasting imprint on your physical body.
In the Heart Technique, I look at the following “root of the root” causes for headaches:
• Physical
• Physiological
• Mental
• Emotional
• A stream of consciousness
• An outside stress
• An inside stress
• Damage, injury or trauma
• Molecular confusion
• A morphogenic field
• External life
• Internal life
• Compression
• Confrontation
• Nutritional
• Heart wall
…the list goes on and on.
I can figure all this out and help you understand it as well.
Remember this: Almost every headache can be traced back to an underlying emotion. Emotions are not just held in the body, they influence our behavior: What we eat, how we move, how we treat our physical bodies, how we age, and more.
Corrections
What’s the use of discovering the root cause of your headaches if there’s no corrections?
Here’s what you need to know about my corrections.
• They are specifically created and designed for you. They are not generic in any way, because you’re not generic in any way. You’re a unique and individual person, living a unique and individual life. There is no one else like you, so the corrections need to be unique and individual too.
• They will empower you. In addition to corrections made in the clinic, I also give “homework” to my patients so that they get even better results and prevent the pain from recurring. You are NOT just a passive patient in my clinic!
By now it may be obvious that if you have chronic headaches that have been resistant to treatment, I can’t simply just give you a list of 10 generic things to do for headache relief.
So here’s what I want you to do
If you suffer from chronic headaches and you’re sick and tired of them, and if you really want to get to the bottom of why you get them and never have another one again, call me. To my knowledge, there is no other chiropractor in Lansing who is willing to dig this deep to find the source of your chronic, treatment resistant headache.
I can’t wait to help you solve the mysteries of your headaches. It’s going to be fun and informative, and I know you will be better!
Remote Healing
Remote healing services for headaches in Lansing are available. Just click on the orange button below to schedule an appointment. You can find out more about remote healing here.
Disclaimer: If you have a sudden onset or very severe headache that feels different from any you have ever had in the past, pain that gets worse when you lie down or sneeze or cough, and/or also experience dizziness, fatigue, confusion, blurred vision or visual disturbance, have experienced a head trauma or blow to the head, or have a very severe HA that won’t go away, or feel generally unwell including nausea or vomiting, please see your doctor or visit the nearest ER right away.