Unfortunately, millions of Americans suffer from chronic headaches. These are often more than just mere annoyances: In many cases, they can be debilitating, resulting in lost work time and years of excruciating pain.
Fortunately, there are many ways to reduce headaches that don’t involve medication or invasive therapy. Both chiropractic and massage have been proven by numerous studies and countless experiences to be extremely effective forms of headache treatment.
Possible Sources of Chronic Headaches
Headaches can come from many different sources. These include:
- Stress: Stress is one of the biggest causes of headaches. Busy schedules, multiple responsibilities, and stressful events can all lead to headache problems.
- Poor posture: Tens of millions of Americans sit at desks or stare at phones all day. Unfortunately, our bodies weren’t meant for this, and headaches often form as a result.
- Allergies & sinuses: Both of these can cause significant pain and discomfort, particularly during times of the year where we are more likely to experience these flare-ups.
Keep in mind there could be other, more serious causes of headaches as well, and that it is important that you communicate your symptoms these with your primary care physician.
How Chiropractic & Massage Therapy Can Help
Chiropractic can be an effective headache treatment in many ways. Spinal manipulation can be helpful at reducing discomfort. Furthermore, a good chiropractor will also help you adjust your posture and ensure that your head and neck are properly aligned. Regular adjustments can help remove any subluxations may be the causes of these headaches.
Massage can also be very effective when it comes to headache treatments. This is for many reasons. First: It feels fantastic. Massages can be an extremely pleasant experience and help identify sources of pain and trigger points. Additionally, a good massage will not only concentrate on just your head. Much of headache pain is often related to chronic issues in your neck, shoulders, and back. Massage therapy can help identify these problems and remove them.
While massage therapy can obviously feel incredible and help you relieve short-term pain, they can also help you address the longer-term causes of headaches. Massages can relax stressed and tight muscles and help you relieve stress, and these two items alone have the potential to provide long-term relief for your headache issues.
For all of these reasons, massage can be one of the more helpful types of headache treatments. Make sure you discuss its potential and possibility with your chiropractor. Give us a call at (415) 788-8700 or book an appointment at any of our San Francisco chiropractic clinics!
