Making Stress Headaches A Thing Of The Past
Dr. Paul Lanthois
August 31, 2008
For those who have experienced headaches in the past, I don´t have to tell you the debilitating effects headaches have on your personal and professional life. For too long stress has been regarded as the main cause of headaches leaving us with few options. Having been labeled as suffering stress headaches throughout my childhood, they have come to be a thing of the past thanks to finding out the real cause of headaches...and it is not stress.
During one spring break, my mother become so concerned about my headache that had been persisting for two weeks that she arranged for me to see one of the top pediatricians at The Women´s and Children´s Hospital in our states capital. It took seven and a half hour drive from our hometown to see him.
"When do you get these headaches?" asked the pediatrician from behind a magnificent polished oak desk.
Annoyed at being dragged away from a vacation of hanging out with my friends, I was reluctant to cooperate until an intimidating glare from my mother prompted me to speak.
"I have been getting regular headaches on and off all my life but the last two weeks it has been every day. It´s ever since this fat girl at school accidentally fell on my head," I replied.
"What time of the day do these headaches occur?"
" I feel a bit of tension at the base of my skull around lunchtime and then it gets progressively worse throughout the day."
" You are suffering from stress headaches," declared the doctor.
"Stress headaches?" I said with more than a hint of my teenage attitude." But I don´t get stressed."
As I sighed and rolled my eyes and contemplated how much of a waste of time this all was, my mother intervened, "What can we do to help this?"
"There is nothing much that you can do except having some rest and taking some painkillers. This will go away in good time."
Later that year I found that there was a lot that I can do to get rid of these headaches. In fact I came across it by accident. After injuring my lower back playing sport I was sent to see a chiropractor. During a physical examination (yes, he actually physically touched me rather than sitting behind a desk) he palpated my neck, finding a couple of areas were excruciatingly painful.
"Do you get headaches or migraines?" he asked.
"Yeah, but doesn´t everybody," I asked, knowing that hardly a week went by without my mother or be afflicted with a bad headache. "What made you ask that? Are you some kind of psychic or something?"
"Hardly," he laughed. "The vertebrae at the top of your neck are out of alignment and are not moving properly. This can irritate the nerves to your head and to your eyes, ears, nose, throat and sinuses and often results in headaches," he explained.
"Is that why my left eye would twitch and then my vision would go blurry?" I asked.
"A lot of my patients have reported similar trouble with their eyes in addition to things like dizziness, sinus problems, and a feeling of having a foggy head. They have all seemed to respond well to chiropractic care."
"Okay," I said eagerly. "What can we do to fix this?"
"You just have to lie there and relax and I will give you a chiropractic adjustment."
I lay there and tried to relax which was easy at first when I was getting a brief neck massage. Then he turned my neck slightly to the left as he said, "I´m going to move it just a little bit more. You may hear a popping noise. Relax."
With someone hanging onto my neck it was difficult to relax properly. I must have relaxed for a millisecond and as soon as I did I felt and heard this almighty "pop" at the top of my neck as the chiropractor adjusted my neck.
"F...far out!" I yelled with a mixture of astonishment and nervousness. He gave my neck another adjustment, he helped me up to the sitting position and felt my neck again.
He seemed pleased with the result. "How does that feel?" he asked.
I turned my neck to the left and then right, raised my shoulders up and down. It was amazing. This tension and sense of heaviness that I had had in my shoulders and neck for as long as I could remember was gone completely.
As I left the chiropractors office I felt euphoric. As I walked home I kept turning my head left and right just to reacquaint myself with this amazing new sensation of neck and shoulders without tension.
That following thirty minute walk home was to be imprinted in my memory forever. Although it happened 25 years ago I can recall it as if it happened yesterday. Thanks to Dr. Rob Anderson headaches have ceased to become a part of my everyday life. It made such a difference to the quality of life of that 14-year-old boy that I grew up and became a chiropractor.
In the last 18 years as a chiropractor, headaches have been one of the most common conditions that I see every day. But the interesting thing is that a lot of patients initially don´t tell me about their headaches, still believing that it is something that can´t be helped. It is as if they think that headaches are an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of a stressful world.
The truth is that stress alone does not cause headaches. If it did everyone would have headaches all the time. In the majority of cases, headaches are referred pain from the upper part of your neck due to misalignment. Stress can normally bring on a headache only if the upper part of your neck is out of alignment or has lost its normal flexibility.
The question everyone needs to ask is, "How can I improve my body´s capacity to handle stress better so that I don´t get headaches when I´m stressed?"
Taking a painkiller just numbs and covers up the real cause. If you get stress headaches consider getting your neck examined by a chiropractor or osteopath. You may discover that your headache is really a pain in the neck.
During one spring break, my mother become so concerned about my headache that had been persisting for two weeks that she arranged for me to see one of the top pediatricians at The Women´s and Children´s Hospital in our states capital. It took seven and a half hour drive from our hometown to see him.
"When do you get these headaches?" asked the pediatrician from behind a magnificent polished oak desk.
Annoyed at being dragged away from a vacation of hanging out with my friends, I was reluctant to cooperate until an intimidating glare from my mother prompted me to speak.
"I have been getting regular headaches on and off all my life but the last two weeks it has been every day. It´s ever since this fat girl at school accidentally fell on my head," I replied.
"What time of the day do these headaches occur?"
" I feel a bit of tension at the base of my skull around lunchtime and then it gets progressively worse throughout the day."
" You are suffering from stress headaches," declared the doctor.
"Stress headaches?" I said with more than a hint of my teenage attitude." But I don´t get stressed."
As I sighed and rolled my eyes and contemplated how much of a waste of time this all was, my mother intervened, "What can we do to help this?"
"There is nothing much that you can do except having some rest and taking some painkillers. This will go away in good time."
Later that year I found that there was a lot that I can do to get rid of these headaches. In fact I came across it by accident. After injuring my lower back playing sport I was sent to see a chiropractor. During a physical examination (yes, he actually physically touched me rather than sitting behind a desk) he palpated my neck, finding a couple of areas were excruciatingly painful.
"Do you get headaches or migraines?" he asked.
"Yeah, but doesn´t everybody," I asked, knowing that hardly a week went by without my mother or be afflicted with a bad headache. "What made you ask that? Are you some kind of psychic or something?"
"Hardly," he laughed. "The vertebrae at the top of your neck are out of alignment and are not moving properly. This can irritate the nerves to your head and to your eyes, ears, nose, throat and sinuses and often results in headaches," he explained.
"Is that why my left eye would twitch and then my vision would go blurry?" I asked.
"A lot of my patients have reported similar trouble with their eyes in addition to things like dizziness, sinus problems, and a feeling of having a foggy head. They have all seemed to respond well to chiropractic care."
"Okay," I said eagerly. "What can we do to fix this?"
"You just have to lie there and relax and I will give you a chiropractic adjustment."
I lay there and tried to relax which was easy at first when I was getting a brief neck massage. Then he turned my neck slightly to the left as he said, "I´m going to move it just a little bit more. You may hear a popping noise. Relax."
With someone hanging onto my neck it was difficult to relax properly. I must have relaxed for a millisecond and as soon as I did I felt and heard this almighty "pop" at the top of my neck as the chiropractor adjusted my neck.
"F...far out!" I yelled with a mixture of astonishment and nervousness. He gave my neck another adjustment, he helped me up to the sitting position and felt my neck again.
He seemed pleased with the result. "How does that feel?" he asked.
I turned my neck to the left and then right, raised my shoulders up and down. It was amazing. This tension and sense of heaviness that I had had in my shoulders and neck for as long as I could remember was gone completely.
As I left the chiropractors office I felt euphoric. As I walked home I kept turning my head left and right just to reacquaint myself with this amazing new sensation of neck and shoulders without tension.
That following thirty minute walk home was to be imprinted in my memory forever. Although it happened 25 years ago I can recall it as if it happened yesterday. Thanks to Dr. Rob Anderson headaches have ceased to become a part of my everyday life. It made such a difference to the quality of life of that 14-year-old boy that I grew up and became a chiropractor.
In the last 18 years as a chiropractor, headaches have been one of the most common conditions that I see every day. But the interesting thing is that a lot of patients initially don´t tell me about their headaches, still believing that it is something that can´t be helped. It is as if they think that headaches are an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of a stressful world.
The truth is that stress alone does not cause headaches. If it did everyone would have headaches all the time. In the majority of cases, headaches are referred pain from the upper part of your neck due to misalignment. Stress can normally bring on a headache only if the upper part of your neck is out of alignment or has lost its normal flexibility.
The question everyone needs to ask is, "How can I improve my body´s capacity to handle stress better so that I don´t get headaches when I´m stressed?"
Taking a painkiller just numbs and covers up the real cause. If you get stress headaches consider getting your neck examined by a chiropractor or osteopath. You may discover that your headache is really a pain in the neck.
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