Dom McKay musculoskeletal therapist today I'll be talking about headaches
I'll answer some basic questions about what causes them and also give you some
advice on how to relieve them if you suffer from regular headaches then this
video's for you there are over 300 causes of headaches and most of them fall into
one of the three following categories
these headaches occur due to a buildup of tension in the neck and shoulders
they usually present bilaterally meaning that they're on both sides and they
produce a pressing or tightening type sensation the reason for the frequent
occurrence of these types of headaches is usually lifestyle factors such as a
lack of movement at work poor posture stress the list goes on neck headaches
or clinically known as cervicogenic headaches are usually caused by a
dysfunction in the top three vertebra of the spine this triggers pain signals to
the trigeminal nucleus which is within the brainstem further complications of
muscular imbalances in the neck and shoulders also irritation to the
cervical and/or occipital nerve can also be a cause of neck headaches they
usually present unilaterally meaning that they're on one side and they
radiate pain from the back to the front of the head they'll usually temporarily
subside if you place pressure here at the base of the skull on the
suboccipital attachments migraines are caused by a chronic neurological
disorder and are characterized by episodic unilateral or bilateral attacks
of head pain which are usually described as throbbing sufferers will experience
photophobia phonophobia and nausea and many people will also experience aura
symptoms if you suffer from migraines or headaches then
it's possible that you're experiencing one two or all three of the above
categories multi-source headaches feed in to each other in that for
example if you suffer from a migraine the pain of that migraine may build
tension up in the neck which then may lead to a neck condition etc etc etc so
even if you've been diagnosed with migraines for which musculoskeletal work
will not give relief you may get some relief from the headache aspect of your
head pain by addressing it this way where there's a musculoskeletal derived cause
or component to your headaches usually soft tissue treatment is highly
effective when applied in the right way now I personally treat headaches by
firstly assessing what is the cause which is usually a combination of
factors secondly I thoroughly treat the muscles in the fashion in the areas
contributing to your headaches which is primarily the suboccipital attachments
at the base of the skull the neck shoulders upper back and in some cases
treatment directly to the head and jaw forms part of the resolution let's have
a look how you can start addressing your headaches at home with some simple
exercises okay so if you're suffering from a headache
right now this is one thing you can do that may potentially help to relieve it
particularly if it's a tension based headache so what we're going to be doing
is applying pressure to the sub occipital attachments which are at the
base of the skull we're going to be using our knuckles for this so it's
quite a harsh pressure you'll need but you'll kind of thank yourself for it
afterwards so you want to be lying on your side and I'm essentially going to
prop my head up with my knuckles
so I just completely relax my neck here and just allow the pressure of the
weight of my head to dig into those knuckles and you can kind of move around
and find the really icky points and look for areas that really refer pain into
the head because they're going to be what's causing your headache so be
careful doing this but if you want immediate relief and kind of like a
temporary solution to your headaches this is a good way to go
so in terms of posture and the effect it has on headaches one of the major things
that will cause headaches is having a forward head carriage which is basically
when your head sits forward in space this is indicative of various things but
one thing that we can work on is the strength of your deep survival flexors
which I want bring your head back in space so the way to work on that is
through chin tucks and I'll give you a demonstration of that so sitting on the
seat just relax and allow yourself to get into a normal position now try and
feel as if you sit straight by breathing and straightening the spine and then
bring the chin back so you're essentially bringing your head back in
space at the same time as focusing on tucking the chin so we're going to look
something like this
and then just relax after a couple of seconds and again drawing the chin in
and looking ever so slightly down to just increase the contraction of the
deep cervical flexors and then again relaxing and again bringing the chin in
and relaxing so you'll kind of feel a stretch through the back of your neck as
you do this we don't want to be concentrating the tension there we want
to be concentrating attention all at the front of the neck further to these
exercises you'll also want to have a look at some of my other videos that
address the neck through mobilizations and stretches and also my rounded
shoulder video which addresses the most likely postural issue that are causing
your headaches I'll link them below I hope this video has been helpful in
educating you about your headaches honestly the treatment to resolving
headaches usually doesn't need to be complex it just needs to be thorough
feel free to ask questions in the comment section there's a link to my website in
the description below subscribe for more great videos and tips thanks for
watching