Migraine headaches: identifying the cause
Migraines are among the most debilitating and frightening neurological problems out there. They may not be fatal, but the effect on a person’s quality of life can be dramatic. Imagine having days when the sight of light paralyzes you. Imagine having terrible nausea and a constant pounding in your head so loud you wish someone would just cut the damn thing off your neck. Imagine that pain that lasts for hours or even days.
You probably already know that feeling, and you’ve almost certainly been in the same room as someone suffering from a migraine attack. Fortunately, most people experience migraine on rare occasions. However, there are some among us who experience these terrible headaches several times a month, and others even experience them DAILY.
This is the typical life of a chronic migraine patient in my office. Many times these patients have consulted various headache specialists. They’ve seen the best neurologists the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic have to offer, and they’ve gone through every MRI and brain scan available. They have tried several different drug regimens, altered their diets, and spent their lives fearing triggers like meat, wine, and sometimes caffeine.
Many have even tried alternative therapies like acupuncture and conventional chiropractic without change.
When they finally sit down and talk to me, they have been in pain for years and almost numb to the fact that they have a constant pain in their head. Some look a bit pale, others need the lights to be turned off in the office, and some even arrive wearing sunglasses. They are all a bit doubtful and skeptical that their condition can be cured.
Less focus on the cure, more focus on the cause
When most people enter the doctor’s office with an illness, they are most often looking for a cure. Although migraines are terribly common and have been around for centuries, a cure has been elusive for the millions of patients who suffer daily. Over-the-counter migraine medications are usually a first line of treatment, followed by prescription medications such as Imitrex and Treximet. Emphasis is also placed on removing triggers from a person’s life, such as chocolate, caffeine, and certain scents / perfumes.
The truth is that headaches (especially migraines) cannot be treated as a simplistic disease that is the same in all people. Headaches are a dynamic entity with multifactorial causes. Rather than viewing a migraine as a disease entity, it should be viewed as a symptom of an uncontrolled neurophysiological process.
The Trigeminal Cervical Complex: The Gatekeeper of Head / Neck Pain
Don’t get hung up on terminology, the name is not important to the casual reader. It is important to understand that near the top of the spinal cord. In the area surrounded by the 3 upper vertebrae of the neck there is a very important set of nerve cells. These specific nerve cells filter incoming signals from the outer layer of the brain known as the meninges. They also filter incoming signals from the brain’s blood vessels, as well as signals coming from the neck.
You see, the brain doesn’t have any receptors that cause pain. It’s crazy to think about it, but it’s true. However, the outer protective covering of the brain and blood vessels are very sensitive to pain. When the receptors in these structures are activated, a cascade of events can occur that lead to blood vessels in the brain opening and swelling.
It is important that we have ‘filters’ like the trigeminocervical complex to ensure that not all pain signals reach the brain. In that way, it acts as a guardian. If I let go of all pain signals, I would be in a state of endless pain.
So what went wrong with the brain’s built-in pain guardian?
The normal alignment and movement of the head and neck serve as a buffer for pain signals reaching the goalkeeper. When you lose normal alignment, several things can happen.
Blood flow in and out of the brain is compromised.
Inflammatory molecules stay in the brain’s blood supply longer.
Neck muscles and ligaments fail
Low-grade inflammation persists in the neck joints.
The small muscles in the neck can pull against the outer layer of the brain.
When this happens, you have an environment where the trigeminal cervical nucleus can become overloaded with pain signals without the buffer of normal head and neck movement signals. Suddenly, a seemingly harmless trigger can send someone with a migraine tendency into a downward spiral of a severe headache.
Correction, not cure
At our office, our goal is to correct the structural position of the head and neck rather than cure migraines. The truth is that structural correction has benefits that go beyond treating or curing a specific disease or condition. The Atlas scroll fix does one thing, and only one thing:
Mobilizes the potential for self-healing and self-healing within your own body.
If we believe that our bodies are meant to be healthy, painless, and vibrant, then we must only find what inhibits the body’s self-healing potential.
The cure is already within you, and the best doctor in the world is the one that resides between your 2 ears: a fully functional and healthy brain.
Because maybe, after all, the disease was in your head.