Drug Free Headaches Solutions

Ask the Chiropractor- Does chiropractic care offer a drug free headache approach?  Join us this week for the answer to this question.  #healthy815 www.rockforddc.com

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- Hello, welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. And Ask the Chiropractor is all about the idea that people have questions about chiropractic or about chiropractic care and don't know who to ask. Often people will ask their family doctors or maybe a medical friend, but I'm here to tell you that they have very little training or education on what chiropractors do. No more than they have training or education what a dentist does. So if you have a question about dentistry you ask a dentist. So if you have a question about chiropractic we started this right here called Ask the Chiropractor. People will email me, text me, or send me a messages below about a question about chiropractic. And I try to answer it here. Today's question comes from the idea, we talk about this topic a lot'cause it's a very interesting topic, about migraine headaches. And is there a drug free approach to taking care of migraine headaches? And if you go back in the library, you'll see I've addressed this many times, but let's talk about it again because it continuously gets asked. Chiropractors have been taking care of headaches for long, long, long time. It's definitely one of the areas that we seem to get some pretty good success with. Now, how do we take care of your headache? Well all headaches are different and unique. Some of the stuff we learned when we study headaches is that we've learned that the cervical trigeminal nucleus is part of the brain that fires no matter whatever you have a headache, no matter what the cause. So as chiropractors, we've studied all the neurology in and out of the cervical trigeminal nucleus and all the different ways we can influence the trigeminal cervical nucleus. By learning more and more about this nucleus and how it functions and how it behaves, we're able to see other things you might find in your chiropractic examinations that might give us clues or indicators. Some of the areas that involves us is obviously as part of the the name is trigeminal is the trigeminal nerve. The trigeminal nerve innervates parts of your face. It's got three branches. Hence the name trigeminal. It's got 1, 2, 3 branches that go across your face. When this one's, these areas of your face are irritated. Often this can cause irritation the trigeminal cervical nucleus. Now, how could you irritate these areas? Well, one is maybe you got sinuses backed up in your face and your nose that would hit this branch of the trigeminal nerve, the maxillary branch. Maybe you have a impacted tooth or a root canal. The maxillary branch goes right along your jaw. That can influence this. Or maybe you just got a lot of sinus pressure because the trees have a lot of pollen and stuff like that. That can affect the top part of the trigeminal nerve. These are different areas that affect the trigeminal nerve and through chiropractic we can help these areas. Often, if you have an area of the sinuses we can adjust your C2, which will open up your sinuses. Another nice thing about C2, second cervical, the bone in your neck right down here. Another nice thing about that one is it's called the cervical trigeminal nucleus. And the reason it's called the cervical part is because the top three bones in your neck your C1, C2 and C3 also play influence in this one. Now another area this one can influence things is fact that it innervates the TMJ muscles and some of the muscles that open and close diameter of your eustachian tube in your ear. If you have headaches and you hear ringing noises and stuff in your ears it could be very much from this. Now as chiropractors, we also look a lot to not only just the alignment of the upper three bone in your neck and how the trigeminal nerve influences but we also like to look at your overall posture. How can posture influence headaches and migraines? Huge factor, huge, huge factor. And this is where a lot of the newest research is coming in general in our field and in just in science, right? We are science. Your spinal cord itself has these really, really strong ligaments called dentate ligaments. And they're called dentate'cause they look like little teeth. That's kind of how they got their name. And these little ligaments, they are strong ligaments. They don't wanna budge or go anywhere. They are super super strong. And they hang onto the walls, okay. So you got these really strong ligaments coming straight off from the spinal cord hanging onto the walls. Now your neck is supposed to have a nice round curve. You've all heard that before. A nice round curve to your neck. Well, if you don't have a curve to your neck and your neck is straight up and down and then you sleep funny or you get a whiplash or you just do something wrong. Maybe you spend too much time raking. Or you jerk yourself back and forth like this. When you go back and forth it caused a whipping motion of your neck. The spinal cord's not gonna move. Those dentate ligaments are there. And if you've already got bad posture you've already got it fully stressed. And now you add one more variable in there. Knowing it's not gonna move. There's only one more thing that can move. And that's pulling down on the brain stem. Now in the base of your skull, you have a hole called a foramen magnum, That's where the brain stem comes down, becomes a spinal cord and goes down your body through your spine. Well, if you have a misalignment in this area and you have this area in stress and tension and you whip it around, you pull that brain stem down. You can actually interrupt the cerebral spinal fluid flow and the venous flow. Now in the old days, we used to think it was the artery flow. Maybe we're not getting enough blood to the brain. That's why we're getting headaches. But today with motion MRI machines we're actually able to see what's going on. It's really cool science. Really cool stuff. And what's happening is it's not so much that you're not getting enough blood up to your brain. Your brain will get the blood it needs. Body took care of that. But it's the venous reflow. It's the blood that you've used. The return of it gets interfered with. And also the spinal fluid flow itself gets interrupted. So if you have chronic really bad migraine headaches and you change your position and you get some relief that could be a spinal fluid flow issue. And if you have these really bad headaches, the venous flow, the blood return is getting backed up creating pressure inside your head, causing all kinds of stress and pressure build up inside your head. And until this venus flow is returned that pressure will not go away. So it's really cool. This is some work I've got to study with recently coming out of down in Florida, Jacksonville, Florida. What they're using this motion MRI machine. They're going in, adjusting the first two bones in a neck and they're watching the midbrain kind of ease back into place. After the stress has been, some of the tension's been released. And we're actually watching the venous flow change. I mean, the venous flow now can go through the vein filters better and get in those vein filters and filter that into the garbage from your brain out.'Cause have to understand, your spinal fluid, we used to think its job would just to have like water and float the brain. But in reality, it has a lot to do with stuff coming in and out of brain now we've learned. And so if you can't get the waste out of the brain and it's hanging out on the spinal fluids, just hanging around the brain, just causing toxicity in the head 'causing a headache. But if you get that venous flow to pull the toxins out of the spinal fluid, put in the veins, have the veins and take it down to your kidney and your spleen and filter it all out and get it going. Then the headaches don't happen. So a lot of times when somebody comes in here they have a really, really bad headache. We'll mess with the, well we don't mess. We'll do like a cradle adjustment to help the spinal fluid flow get better by putting some pressure points. We'll do an upper cervical adjustment and they'll get up and they'll just feel like, you know some people describe like a toilet bowl flushing, everything just getting drained and sucked outta you. And then the headaches go away. Now, all the headaches describe, they're all different. And how do we know which one affects you? Which one you are? Well, that's where we do our chiropractic exam. And again, this is unique treating only chiropractors have. We look at your alignment on your x-rays. We look to see how you bend and twist. How you're leaning, not leaning. Which shoulder's up, which shoulder's down. We look at all this stuff and that's how we determine your care plan and what kind of care you need. So if you know somebody's had headaches for a long, long time, or if you have headaches yourself and you don't believe your headaches are result of lack of medication but you think there might be something more going on come in and check with a chiropractor. Have that chiropractor do an examination of your neck. Again, you could ask your headache specialist. You could ask your family doctor about whether they think chiropractic will work for them or not but just keep in the back of your mind. They've got no formal education or training on what chiropractors do or don't do. So maybe not the best ones to ask. So ask a chiropractor. Here I will tell you if you've already had x-rays of your neck and you were standing up, we can use those x-rays. We don't have to do it all over again. And we're happy to talk to your doctors and work with your doctors to gather information. And we also converse with your doctors. Just because they don't have an education in chiropractic doesn't mean that we can't have an education on you and talk about you. So we work hand in hand with the other doctors. So if you don't have to worry about that. But if you have a question about this, or if you have a question about drug free solution to headaches or if you'd like more information, leave a message below. Reach out to us. Our web address is Rockford R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D dc.com, rockforddc.com. You can reach out to us there and then hit the contact us. We'll get back to you. Otherwise leave a message below. Direct message us, enjoy the podcast. And other than that, stay healthy, stay strong. And like always if you have a question about chiropractic care you should be asking a chiropractor. I'm doctor Brant Hulsebus. Thank you for listening.