I am one of those lucky few who rarely get headaches. So whenever I do fall victim to the random head pain, I don’t do a very good job dealing with it.

It both surprises and saddens me that people who get chronic headaches learn to live each and every day with the pain. I am in awe of these people, as I can barely carry on a conversation or concentrate on the simplest task with my head pounding.

As a Comox Valley Chiropractor, I meet people constantly who have had headaches for months and even years. They’ve been to the family doctor and the neurologist, they’ve had the CT scan or the MRI and they’ve finally settled on a daily regimen of some strong pain killer. They often end up in my office as a last resort, because they have nothing else to lose, and nobody has been able to identify the cause of their pain.

The fact is that a large proportion of headaches have at least some component originating from the structures in the neck. Simply put, the nerves, muscles, joints and ligaments of your neck can become irritated or inflamed and result in you feeling the pain in your head.  This irritation can result from injuries such as whiplash and sports trauma, or from more everyday stresses such as prolonged computer work.

A hallmark of these types of headaches (commonly confused with tension headaches) is that you will notice a decrease in your neck range of motion, often with pain at the end ranges of the movement. You will have very sore neck muscles, especially those located at the top of your neck under your skull. Often times these muscles, when massaged deeply, will reproduce your headache pain.

The bottom line is that you don’t need to suffer needlessly. If you haven’t found a solution to your ongoing headache problem, then a visit to your local chiropractor should be on your list of possible therapies.