Understanding Headaches and Headache Treatment
Headaches are defined by pain in the face, head and/or neck. Headache pain can range from mild to debilitating, and can be intermittent or chronic. Traditional Western medicine teaches that headaches are usually caused by a disturbance in the blood vessels and/or nerves in the face, head and/or neck, which is kind of a way of saying that with any given headache, they might not be sure what the cause is. Dr. Blatman’s decades of research and experience with holistic, regenerative medicine in New York and Cincinnati patients suggests that this theoretical framework might not be true. Your headache does not come from your head… and not your blood vessels and not your nerves. In fact, most headaches are actually a symptom of previous injury to head and neck fascia, an underlying medical condition, or a bodily response to toxins. Some possible causes of headaches are:
- Infection
- Too much alcohol
- Tumors
- High blood pressure
- Diseased blood vessels in the brain (aneurism)
- Inflammatory food added to a lifetime of injuries to upper body fascia
Unveiling the Mystery of Headaches and Headache Treatment
Headaches can be debilitating, even when they don’t have a serious underlying cause. Headaches are an extremely common ailment; the medical community estimates that over 75% of adults will experience headaches at some point. One issue is that mainstream medicine has identified some 150 different types of headaches. And thereby we need different medicines and protocols for each variation in symptoms.
What we at the Blatman Health and Wellness Center have learned from over 30 years of practice and teaching other doctors who use our techniques is that most headaches are caused by a lifetime of injuries to fascia. Fascia is the connective tissue that covers and intertwines all the tissues, organs, bones, and muscles in your body. Fascia is what allows your muscles and joints to move, flex and function. Headaches are most often caused by a lifetime of injuries to the muscles and fascia in your head, neck, upper shoulders and jaw, combined with an immune system response to the toxicity of processed foods and environmental toxins… and then there are hormones… especially in teenage girls.
Just touch your neck, upper shoulders, and even jaw muscles. Dr. Blatman has never seen a person with a headache who does not have tight and tender myofascia in at least some of these areas. And everybody’s central nervous system interprets this information differently, so we have made up lots of different “types” of headaches from which to choose a name. Most of the time the only actual difference in how a headache presents is how one person’s myofascial injuries are interpreted by their particular brain.
The reason your muscles are tight is because of a lifetime of incremental, micro-injuries to the fascia and the muscles as you lifted, carried, jumped and rolled. Maybe you also experienced more significant trauma, such as a head injury from an accident. Another reason the muscle fibers are stuck together is because of the toxicity of food and environmental poisons.
This buildup of damage often causes areas of tenderness we refer to as “trigger points”. Anything that helps make the trigger points less tender (read: releases or unkinks the fascia) will help reduce the headache symptoms. Bodywork, acupuncture, herbs, energy healing, mind body, as well as mindful hydration, altering your sleeping position, and doing biofeedback can all be helpful. Regenerative medicinal treatments like PRP therapy, stem cell injections and trigger point injection treatments can also remedy the myofascial damage that causes the headache symptom.
Headaches Are Not What We Were Taught
Pain is not what we were taught in medical school. And headache is also not what we were taught. Perhaps that’s part of why doctors struggle so hard to classify so many different kinds of headaches…because the classifications are essentially meaningless. Anyone who’s ever written a research paper has probably been told that the longer it takes you to make your point, that means the less you know about it. It’s the same with chronic pain conditions. The long, long list of types of headaches, types of symptoms, and possible causes all point to us knowing less, not more, about how headaches work.
Everything you have ever learned about headache is just theory; very little has been proven. And unfortunately, most Western medicine-based theories on pain exclude or ignore the role of fascia and our immune system as the huge players they are in how our body responds to adverse stimuli. If headaches are not coming from infection, alcohol, tumors, blood pressure, or aneurisms, more likely than not, they are referred pain from kinked/damaged fascia and are actually myofascial pain.
Most all headaches are essentially the same, and they all go away the same way… unkink the fascia and heal enough from your injuries that this combination of injuries and kinks (trigger points) becomes ignorable, just like other injuries in your body that fly under your radar. Dr. Blatman says: “To see what I mean, just look for the kinks and tenderness in parts of your body where you don’t think you have pain.”
The Difference Between a Headache and a Migraine
There is no real difference in cause between migraine, tension, post-traumatic, and cluster headaches. They are just variations of the same theme. They all come from the tender muscles and fascia of your head, neck, upper shoulders, upper back and jaw. What confuses medical professionals is that everyone experiences the pain in many different ways…as many ways as there are kinds of headaches.
Migraines occur when the central nervous system has had enough toxic input from injured muscle and fascia that it starts to generate its own pain pattern, causing the various phenomena called aura. If you can keep this toxic input below the threshold, migraines can be mostly avoided. Botox decreases this toxic input by paralyzing the muscles so they are physically unable to tighten their kinks.
When it comes to treatment, medications only work temporarily, which means at the end of the day that they do not work. One of the reasons headaches are such a struggle for many people is all about food.
Today, lifestyle habits, such as your diet, are often the cause of many chronic ailments. Food was never meant to be processed or contain man-made chemicals and preservatives. Food was never meant to be mass-produced, stuffed with sugars and packaged in toxic plastics. Fortunately for our patients, we can provide a serious do-not-eat list of the foods that cause the immune system to react to toxicity. These foods make our fascia strings glue themselves together, lighting up a lifetime of kinks and injuries like plugging in a bright, multicolored lamp.
When a Headache is an Emergency
If your headache comes with other symptoms like sudden onset of debilitating pain, vision issues, vertigo, change in speech, fever or vomiting, or stiffness in your neck, these could be symptoms of life-threatening issues like bacterial meningitis, stroke or an issue with your spinal fluid. You should seek medical attention immediately. With headache pain, if it seems like an emergency, treat it like one. Better safe than sorry.
Try Some Natural Headache Treatments at Home
To help yourself, perhaps start by keeping a good sleep schedule and drinking more water. Also limit your caffeine intake and alcohol consumption. Stay away from tobacco. Low magnesium levels are also associated with chronic headaches, especially so-called cluster headaches. Making sure you have a healthy exercise regimen may help as well. There is also the “Do Not Eat List” we mentioned that teaches you the inflammatory foods you should avoid. Sign up for our newsletter and download it. With any medical issue, if you can resolve it with some simple lifestyle changes, you should.
Headache Treatment in Cincinnati and New York
There are currently a lot of pharmaceutical options for headache and migraine treatment on the market. However, they all come with risks like heart problems or increased chance of stroke. Blatman Health and Wellness Center of Cincinnati and New York offers alternative headache treatments like trigger point injections and myofascial release that don’t come with the health risks traditional medications present. And these treatments work well enough to make many headaches go away. Our focus on regenerative medicine and treating the patient comprehensively means we are researching and practicing the latest in holistic medical technology that reduces pain from injured fascia. Call our office today for information on techniques we use to treat headaches.