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How can Manual Osteopathic Therapy help headaches & migraines?
Migraines can have many causes, including being idiopathic (having no known cause). Some known causes are the blood supply to the head and neck, nerve irritation, and musculoskeletal irritations, especially in the head and neck.
Because the main principle of osteopathy is to treat the body as a whole, it’s common to relieve headaches and migraines by balancing the entire body. Sometimes, this includes direct work to the head and neck. Other times, correcting a restriction of the coccyx (tail bone) will relieve symptoms. It’s all connected!
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What are common causes of headaches and migraines that Manual Osteopathic Therapy can treat?
- Chronic tension and stress in the neck and shoulders. This might be caused by visceral restrictions between organs, or perhaps nerve or blood flow between the head and the neck. By assessing organ movement and the pathways of nerves and blood flow, Carrie can find restrictions and help your body unwind them.
- Head trauma from birth, motor vehicle accidents, sports. Most head trauma has an impact on the sutures between the cranial bones. By assessing and treating their movement through cranial osteopathy, some headaches disappear.
- Jaw problems (TMJ dysfunction), can refer pain into the head. Cranial osteopathy can relieve tension in the jaw and mouth and help realign the jaw.
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Can I get treatment while I have a headache or migraine?
This is going to depend on you. Getting a treatment while you have a headache probably isn’t a big deal, but if you’re in the middle of a migraine, you’ll probably want to stay home and rest. Treatments between migraines has been shown to lower the number of occurrences, increase the time between occurrences, and decrease the pain when they do occur (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5359118/).
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