I’m here today to talk to you about headaches and even migraine headaches. This is one of the most complex complaints patients have when they go to a doctor’s office. There are many reasons why people have headaches, and I will give you a list of the most common reasons.

One thing we need to rule out of as far as physicians go is to rule out any type of vascular problem such as something that’s blocking blood flow. If we talk about other conditions besides vascular conditions there’s many. One of the big topics is hormones, especially hormones in women around the menstrual cycle. This is the time when the body is detoxifying estrogen and progesterone. If there is congestion in the liver, there’s going to be blood that backs up into circulation which can cause headaches. Other ones are allergies. This can be indoor or outdoor allergies that can cause headaches. We also have food sensitivities. I do quite a bit of food testing, food allergy testing, in my office and that is one consideration that we have to think about. Blood sugar handling problems, especially low blood sugar people oftentimes get headaches because of low blood sugar and that is something that I identify in my practice to help correct that so they no longer have headaches.

Stress is also a big one. A lot of people carry tension up here in the shoulders and stress has many avenues. It could be physical, chemical, thermal or mental and chasing down which is the cause is often what needs to be found. Along with stress we could have a structure, and what I mean by structure, I mean the bones in the body. I’m going to pick up bones over here those of your skeletal system. Headaches can be caused from muscle strain which is also going to inhibit nerve flow. I’m going to turn around this spine here a little bit so you can see these nerves that branch out from the side of the neck and they go down the arm. Muscle spasm can cause structural problems, which is again affecting the nerve supply which is also going to affect the blood supply here. If you watch my other blogs that I have in the past, you will see where I’ve talked about one artery, the vertebral artery and it passes through each vertebra, and it goes all the way up into the skull. If there are segments of the cervical spine or the bones in the neck that are out, they are going to be obstructing or pinching that vertebral artery which is cutting off that blood supply to the head, and therefore you get a headache. That’s very common, and that is why chiropractic has been so very helpful with headaches, because it helps to restore that blood flow and the nerve flow.

Besides structure, people have one sided headaches. I get a common complaint in my office, saying I always get a headache right here on the left side of their head, and that is definitely neurological in nature. There also could be hormonal issues and very much nutritional deficiencies. That is a big part of my practice in identifying those nutritional deficiencies.

I want to talk to you about NutraSweet or artificial sweeteners. We all know what these are. They come in the pink, yellow and blue packets. There have been many studies on NutraSweet or artificial sweeteners and the damaging effects that they have on the human body. I test NutraSweet on my patients in my office, and I always get a negative reaction. So if you are suspecting that your headaches are due to artificial sweeteners, try going off NutraSweet or what have you for a couple weeks and see what happens. I looked at food allergies before in the past, talking about the different types of headaches. Corn, wheat, dairy and soy are the biggest food allergies and they are the most common foods that we eat every day. In my office, there are ways that I test for those food allergies.
If headaches are relieved by over the counter medications, such as they’re called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. If a patient comes in to me and says, they get headaches and the only thing that helps them is by taking some over-the-counter medication that is a definite clue this person has essential fatty acid imbalance, and what do I mean by that? Essential fatty acids are and just a couple for example, here are your fish oils, they are your black currant seed oil, flaxseed oil, borage oil, etc. These people need to be taking these nutrients.
Last but not least, we can’t overlook this reason for a headache, and that is if someone has consumed too much wine, or if they have consumed too much wine and got hit in the head with the wine bottle, that could obviously cause a headache, so we’ve got to rule that one out too as well.

I have identified to you the various causes of headaches. A lot of people seek care at my office because they have heard from other patients of mine about the different type of testing I do to identify, not just correcting migraine headaches or other headaches, but other common health conditions people have. One of the reasons why they choose my office is they know I’m a certified Applied Kinesiology doctor and this equips me with the tools to really finding out the cause of a person’s condition. Chiropractic care is what we all need. We also have to remember what’s going on with the muscle and how that muscle affects the body. This is the reason people seek me, because this is what I do. I hope this has been very helpful for you today.