A headache is one thing, a thing that affects roughly half of the worldwide population at least once per year. But a headache that you can’t understand is an entirely different animal, resulting in not only confusion but frustration. While you can work on minimizing your triggers as long as you know what they are, a headache that comes on out of the blue can be as puzzling as it is painful. You might think about what you’ve eaten that day, what you’ve had to drink, whether you’ve exercised, or how many hours you’ve been staring at the dim flicker of your computer screen. But here are some little understood causes of headaches you might not think about.
A Medication Overdose Headache
Of the over 200 types of headaches that plague the world’s population, there is one that many people are unfamiliar with. Yet, according to Manjit Matharu, neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, one in fifty people who complain of a headache are suffering from a medication overdose headache. In the UK, for example, the BBC has reported that up to one million people have absolutely preventable headaches that result solely from the intake of too many pills. In our pharmaceutical-reliant society, this is no surprise. But, of course, it is a vicious cycle: people take pain medications for various issues, wind up with a headache, and dose themselves with more meds. In this detrimental spin, there is no room for the body to heal itself.
Headaches After Trauma
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a well known fact of life, but post trauma headaches? While common, this phenomenon is less accepted, though just as prevalent. Although the most common types of headaches are migraines and tension or stress pains, trauma headaches are frequently seen amongst those who have experienced a physically jarring or fight-or-flight situation. A car accident or a sports injury are good examples of trauma that might spur a pattern of headaches minutes, days, or even months later. Other accompanying symptoms include dizziness, nausea, vertigo, brain fog, memory loss, sleeplessness or excess, and habit alteration. When you’ve experienced a traumatic event, your top priority should be taking care of your health. This may mean seeing a chiropractor like Dr. Nygaard who can help in reversing the effects of the trauma by realigning your body to its natural self-restoration.
Drug-Free Headache Relief
Luckily, there’s at least one healing modality that offers completely non-invasive, drug-free, and actually safe headache therapy. Dr. Nygaard specializes in helping people get to the root cause of their headaches, by making minor adjustments that help the brain and body to communicate with each other more easily, thereby improving your pain response and overall health.
NC Headache Clinic Frees Patients From Headache-Causing Drugs
One-quarter of American households include someone who suffers from migraines, and the most popular treatment for these painful, often throbbing headaches is prescription or over-the-counter medication. Why not? It’s fast and easy, and seems to get the job done. But did you know that a large percentage of severe headaches are actually caused by these drugs? The World Health Organization has reported that as many as 5{115649cd14c12cd94f0d147e1e5923e5cfd090a3a81f6b6da2d6b334a1994be8} of all headaches might be drug-induced. When someone has a migraine or other unrelated pain such as arthritis, they often pop a pill, hoping that the pain will go away. When it doesn’t, they take another one, increasing the severity and length of their headaches each time. The cycle must be broken.
Drugs Worsen Headaches and Health
The side effects of the drugs that are used to manage pain typically include ‘headache’ as one of the listed symptoms. How’s that for irony? Nausea, vertigo, neck, jaw, and throat pain are just a few of the side effects listed on the most popular pain medications. According to the BBC in England, over one million people are experiencing headaches as a result of their pill-popping habit. These are utterly preventable, and can be addressed healthily with chiropractic care which gets down to the heart of the issue, analyzing the root cause of the headache instead of putting a ‘bandaid’ of medication on it.
Don’t Cover Up Your Pain (Could this be re-titled as Your Guide to Pain Management in Asheville, NC)
Smothering your pain is not the answer. Rather, it leads to a whirlpool of pain, stress, and frustration that you can’t seem to fight your way out of. If you’ve found yourself reaching for pain medications to smother your pain, we understand. It’s only natural to want to feel good. But by working with Dr. Nygaard to examine the cause of the pain, there is hope to resolve it without having to rely on headache-inducing, costly, and dangerous medications for the rest of your life.
At Atlas Brain and Body, a top-quality NC headache clinic, it is our mission to provide with you with resources, health, and help along your way to a drug-free, pain-free lifestyle. We were the first NC headache clinic to have digital x-rays, and pride ourselves on offering you a friendly, professional environment where you will be seen, heard, and understood.
