Neck pain and headache relief
A great many headaches do not begin in the head. They begin in the top two joints of the neck, and they refer upward — which is why they so often arrive on one side, behind one eye, after a long day at a screen.
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Why the top of the neck refers pain into the head
The first three cervical nerves share a pathway with the nerve that supplies sensation to your face and scalp. Your brain receives signals from both down what is effectively a shared line, and it cannot always tell which end they came from. Irritation at the top of the neck therefore gets interpreted as pain in the head — most often behind the eye, over the temple, or across the forehead on one side.
This is why a headache can respond to work done on the neck when nothing in the head has changed at all.
What sustained posture does to the joints
A head weighs roughly twelve pounds when it is balanced over your shoulders. Tip it forward to look at a phone or a monitor and the load carried by the muscles at the back of your neck multiplies several times over. Hold that for eight hours a day, five days a week, and two things happen: the muscles that resist the tipping stay contracted until they ache, and the joints underneath them stop moving through their full range because nothing ever asks them to.
Stiff joints, tight muscle, irritated nerves, headache. That is the sequence, and it explains why the pain is so often worst on the days you sat still the longest.
What we do about it
The exam looks specifically at how much rotation, side-bending and extension you actually have in the neck, and at which individual segments are restricted — because “my neck is stiff” almost never means the whole neck. Usually two or three joints are doing none of the work and the ones above and below are doing too much.
Treatment combines adjustments to the restricted segments with soft-tissue work across the muscles at the base of the skull and along the tops of the shoulders, where the tension actually lives. Our assistants use mechanical-assisted massage to reach the muscle bulk; the joints need the adjustment.
Where the headaches are tied to a jaw or bite pattern, or to a nutritional trigger, applied kinesiology can help work out what else is feeding the problem. Plenty of people find their headache frequency tracks something they eat.
What usually changes first
Frequency tends to move before intensity. People often report that the headaches still come but there are fewer of them, then that the ones they get are milder and shorter, then that whole weeks pass without one. Neck rotation usually improves faster than the headaches do — you will notice reversing the car before you notice the change in your head.
The part you can help with is what happens between visits. If your monitor is below eye level, raising it does more for you than any single adjustment will. We will tell you what specifically to change rather than handing you a generic posture sheet.
Come and find out what is actually going on
Consultation, full examination, any x-rays you need and your first adjustment — $45, one appointment.
Questions people ask
How do I know if my headache is coming from my neck?
The pattern is usually the giveaway — one-sided, starting at the base of the skull, worse after sustained postures, and reproducible when the upper neck joints are pressed. The examination tests exactly that. If your headaches do not fit the pattern, we will tell you and point you toward the right person.
Is it safe to have my neck adjusted?
Neck adjustments are performed many millions of times a year and serious complications are very rare. What matters is that somebody examines you properly first, and that the technique is chosen for your presentation. If anything in your history or exam suggests we should not adjust your neck, Dr. Tyler will use a low-force approach or refer you.
I get migraines. Is this the same thing?
Not necessarily. Migraine and cervicogenic headache are different conditions, though they can coexist and one can trigger the other. Chiropractic care addresses the neck component. If your headaches are primarily migrainous, that is a conversation to have with your physician too — and we will say so rather than pretend otherwise.
My neck cracks by itself all day. Is that bad?
Self-cracking usually means you are repeatedly moving whichever joints already move too freely, because the stiff ones next to them will not budge. It relieves the tension for about twenty minutes and then it comes back. The joints that actually need moving are the ones you cannot reach.