Tension Headaches And Forward Head Posture

I rarely get a headache, but when I do it always amazes me at how awful I feel. I'm not just bothered by the pain but my entire mood is altered. I feel like I want to crawl into bed and not come out until it's gone. I can't imagine living with headaches which a lot of people do. I also noticed that my first response to a headache is always to take a pill to try to alleviate it. I see hundreds of patients annually with this scenario and most of these patients have had the headaches for years and pop over the counter pain relievers by the thousands. I have read the latest statistics involving the devastating side effects of these medications published by the New England Journal of Medicine and that is why I am writing this article.

I have been in chiropractic practice for over ten years and have eliminated thousands of headaches without medication. The trick to permanently eliminating headaches is to correct the cause. According to an article that was published by a leading dental expert, the suboccipital nerve bundle(a bunch of nerves that sit between the base of the head and the top of your neck)is continuous with the meningial sheath that covers your brain. This meningial sheath is thought to be the leading source of headaches, in fact when you drink to much alcohol this sheath is what causes the headache part of the hangover. When we look at cause and cure we need enough cases to be sure that we have found the answer. I have personally seen 872 cases of headaches with 871 of these cases having what is termed FHP "Forward Head Posture". In all 871 cases of forward head posture I was able to eliminate or substantially reduce the forward head posture. Guess how many cases the headache pain was reduced or eliminated, that's right all of them, Bingo.

Forward head posture is commonly caused by poor ergonomics at work or at home. It is a learned condition. Your body adapts in time and in need to its environment. By over utilizing certain muscle groups and under utilizing others you develop an imbalance. This primary imbalance was documented by a well known neurosurgeon and spine rehabilitation expert Vladimir Janda, who termed the imbalance upper cross syndrome. The primary muscles that become hyperactive are the scalenes, SCM, and suboccipital group. This causes the head to move forward but at the same time the head also rotates to a chin up position to accommodate the eye line. This head rotation then closes the space between the occipital bone and the first cervical vertebrae. The suboccipital nerve bundle lies in this very tight space so when you have forward head posture you start pinching this nerve bundle which is linked with the meningial sheath and WHAM-O a headache is generated. This also explains why a lot of headaches come and go due to the head and body position. The ergonomic position you maintain for a prolonged period of time will determine how much pressure develops in this delicate nerve bundle. According to x-ray findings some people have more space in this area which makes them less likely to develop headaches from this postural distortion. Men generally are less likely to develop the FHP headache due to a larger space as well. People with computer jobs are at highest risk because of the constant sitting and forward driven ergonomics that are placed on the body in this type of job scenario.

So how do we correct this condition and eliminate those nasty headaches once and for all? You have to first take into consideration what created the postural dysfunction in the first place, remember it is a learned posture. There are three primary tissues you need to take into consideration: joints, muscles, and ligaments. Restricted joint motion must be eliminated through chiropractic adjustments. Slow twitch muscles must be retrained or stimulated, this can be done through reactive head weighting, I'll explain later. Ligaments do not respond to either adjusting or exercise and this is why long term correction often fails because most people that have tried chiropractic, massage, and exercise find it to be only short term relief. Ligaments need to be addressed through creep mechanisms which means pressure over time applied to a ligament will cause the ligament to uncoil and lengthen.

So at my office we have a 4 step process to eliminate forward head posture. Adjustments first, muscle detoxification second(this is done using a hand help vibrational tool and applied to the hyperactive muscles), ligament lengthening third(this is done using vibrational traction "VT" where a vibrating cylinder is placed under the neck and the head is then weighted to induce extension and held for 7-15 minutes causing the anterior neck ligaments to lengthen. ) and last glasses are placed on the patient which causes the head to rotate upward slightly and a headband with weight in the front is put on to cause the posterior neck muscles to become active. This chain reaction causes the head posture to return to normal. I then place the patient on a whole body vibration platform with the headband on to cause the active posterior neck muscles to become hyperactive which speeds up the correction time. After several treatments the forward head posture is eliminated and a simple home program with ergonomic tips is in place to prevent return of the FHP. Once the forward posture is successfully eliminated so to are the headaches, neck pain, shoulder tension, and other symptoms associated with this common condition known as FORWARD HEAD POSTURE SYNDROME.