Ask the Chiropractor- Can Chiropractic help with cervicogenic headaches? Dr Hulsebus discusses in this week's episode. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
Ask the Chiropractor- Can Chiropractic help with cervicogenic headaches? Dr Hulsebus discusses in this week's episode. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
- Hello. Welcome to another edition of "Ask The Chiropractor." I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus, the chiropractor. So this is our podcast where people have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, and they really want to get an answer before they get too involved and they don't know where to go or who to ask. So, a lot of people might ask their family doctor but your family doctor has no education or background in chiropractic, like a chiropractor would, no more than your family doctor has an education or background in dentistry compared to your dentist. So if you had a question about your teeth, you wouldn't ask your family doctor, you would ask your dentist. This is our podcast called"Ask The Chiropractor." Today I wanna talk about a really cool thing. I was asked about this, and I just got to listen to a really cool podcast about the newest research that just got published on this topic, and it's about headaches. I have a headache. These are called cervicogenic headaches. Cervicogenic headaches. Cervical means the bones in your neck and genic means comes from the bones in your neck. So, a cervicogenic headache."Can chiropractic help a cervicogenic headache?" Great question, I'm glad it was asked. So let's talk about a cervicogenic headache first. A cervicogenic headache is a really unique headache. They're not slight headaches; they're pretty aggressive headaches. You will definitely not want to keep working or doing what you're doing,'cause your head's really getting into you. It also kind of stems like from the eyes and up that area and it feels like a point. It can be one side, usually one side. And what happens is you also have sharp pain in your shoulder, like you have these knots in your shoulder blades, in this upper back area. A lot of times I'll describe it like a knuckle from the inside trying to dig its way out. And that's kind how it feels in there, all achy. The other unique thing about these headaches are they tend to kick on about the same time of the day. Like every day I go to work and around 11 o'clock, I got a headache again, and it gets worse as the day goes on. You know, I come to work, I feel fine,
but by 11:00, it's always there. And there's a pattern to when you're getting these. The reason this happens is because these headaches are caused by your posture. It's caused by hunching over and your shoulders forward and your head out, and it puts pressure in your neck and some of those nerves and mechanical receptors inside your neck, your cervical area of your spine, and this is what creates the headaches. And so the reason why it happens at work about the same time all the time is because when once I get in that position behind my computer or behind my steering wheel or wherever, whatever work is, once I've gotten to that posture, about the same amount of time each day it starts to get achy and sore and bothers me. Long term, these could start at three o'clock then go to two o'clock then one o'clock because you're not getting better, you're only getting worse. So they're coming on sooner, you know, developing bad muscle memory. So these are very almost semi-predictable headaches because we know what time of the day they're coming. And you might tell me,"You know what?"Over the weekend, I didn't have them at all."Maybe it's like something at work." Well, maybe it's just the posture of what you're doing at work is causing the problem. So when you come to the chiropractor, you'll tell us you have this headache all like from right above my eye all the way back to my ear and that side of my skull. You'll tell us that you get some, you know, I'll lay you down and I'll feel some trigger points on your shoulder blade area, you know, right above your shoulder blade, next to your shoulder blade. I'll put my finger there and I'll say,"Ooh, does that hurt?" And you're like, "Ow." And I'll dig my finger and I'll say, when I dig my finger and I'll mention this, I'll tell you,"I bet this feels great and awful." And people usually say, "Yes." So usually what we do on these patients as well, well, first of all, we'll take some x-rays and want to verify what we're saying and we'll usually see some upper neck, the C1-C2, we'll see some misalignments there. But what we'll really see is on the sideways view of your neck, we'll see a very straight neck, like a military neck, or worse, your head sticking way out, what we call forward head posture, when your chin's sticking way out over your sternum when it's should be right above your sternum, nice and tall. But people go down forward like this and they increase that pressure. We'll look at your scapula, your thoracic area where your ribs are, and we'll see that you have rotating of your shoulders forward, and we'll see you have a little bit of that hunching going on. This all comes from that really, really bad posture. From there, we'll give you a very specific chiropractic adjustment based on our findings, both on the way you turn, you move, you bend, what we feel and what the x-rays show us. So, we'll give you a few adjustments in that area, try to loosen you up first. That's always step one, gotta loosen you up, gotta get rid of those areas that are stuck and that are fixated. They have bad muscle memory. We have to start to retrain and refocus that area. Now, once we get that accomplished, once you're moving better, your range of motion's better, you still start to get some relief, but you're still gonna be sore, you're still gonna be tender. So the next thing we have to do is we have to maybe work on the soft tissue itself. Sometimes we refer to a massage therapist. Sometimes we give you some at-home exercises to work on, trying to break up some of that soft tissue. You see, when the soft tissue, the muscle area, when that's inflamed, inflamed tissue gets sticky. Sticky makes knots, knots make more inflammation which makes it, of course, more inflammation makes it more sticky, which makes more knots. So we have to break this vicious cycle because you're gonna keep doing the same thing at work. It's really hard to break that cycle without introducing something new. So you can either take away or add something new. Well, you're probably not gonna quit your job. And the odds are, if you get a new job, it's gonna have probably a similar posture. So, you know, we're not gonna walk away from our job. What we're gonna do instead of that is we're gonna add more. So I always talk about the idea that sometimes your work posture's bad, so it's like your posture's so bad that when you're sitting there, no matter how you do it you're losing five bucks a day. So as a chiropractor, I'm not really gonna spend a lot of time on making you stop losing $5.00 a day with your bad posture, bad posture's negative $5.00 a day. Instead, what we're gonna talk about is we're gonna talk about how to make an extra $10.00, right? Because whatever you do is making you bad, and we're not gonna stop doing that. So how do we do that but add so much benefits that it outweighs the negatives, right? So standing up, squeezing my shoulder blades together, pulling them down, doing snow angels on the wall every day to change my posture, or not so much change my posture, but also not get stuck in the bad posture, right?'Cause getting stuck in the bad posture is what causes aching and pain, so we have to break that cycle. Now if you're really bad, we'll probably get a physical therapist involved or a massage therapist to help us get you over the hump as we're adjusting you. So eventually here, we do some adjustments and we work on that soft tissue and you're moving better, you're feeling better, headaches are going away, everything's good. And then what do we do after that? Well, now we have to come up with some type of maintenance for you, because like I said, you're going back to the same job again. Now does that mean you need to come to the chiropractor once a week forever? Hopefully not. Hopefully you're not that bad. And I would argue if your job is that bad, maybe we will help you look for a new job. But, no, seriously, most people come in like once a month, once every six weeks. It's when they start feeling it starting to creep back in,'cause once you've had this, you'll know it and you'll start to feel it come back in. You're like, "Well, I better get in there and get checked." So you come in, you get checked, we'll reassess your stretches and your exercises and make sure that you're doing them right and making sure everything's working the way it's supposed to. That way you continue to try to stay ahead of this and not fall behind. So, yeah, when you first come to see us, you're gonna see us for a little bit. We gotta catch up with where you are. Then once we catch up with where you are, then we have to teach you how to get ahead of it. And we'll work with you both in the office and give you homework assignments with the exercise and the stretches and get ahead of it. But these cervicogenic headaches can be a thing of the past if you're willing to put the time and energy into it, because if you're not willing to put the time and energy into it with your chiropractor, then it's here to stay, because the things that created it are still happening every day. So we have to work to get ahead of it. So if you wanna learn about this more or talk more about this, leave me a message below, give us a call, stop in the office, go to our website, rockforddc.com. R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C dot com. Leave us a message there, ask us questions, stop in and talk to us. If you're not live around me in Rockford, Illinois and you want to see another chiropractor to see if they can help you, sometimes I know people. I am the Illinois delegate of the International Chiropractic Association, so if you're in North Carolina, I might know my North Carolina rep. If you're in Utah, I definitely know my Utah rep. I will connect you with Dr. Stucky and we'll take good care of you. So that's "Ask The Chiropractor" this week, cervicogenic headaches, what are they, what do I do about them and how do I keep 'em from coming back, right? Because we don't need those headaches. All right, well, I hope everybody learned a little something about cervicogenic headaches today. I am Dr. Brant Hulsebus, Chiropractor. If you have a question, leave me it below, get back to us. Maybe next time when you go on this here, you'll be the question of the week on"Ask The Chiropractor." Remember, if you have a question about chiropractic, the only person who can truly answer that is a chiropractor. Thank you.