Fighting the "Stress Disease" - Reduce the effects of Tension Headaches

Chiropractic treatment can drastically reduce the frequency and the length of your headaches.

Until Recently headaches were largely considered a nuisance by the medical community and many other health care providers. But patients who suffer from headaches consider their problem nothing less than a painful and sometimes disabling. Several studies have shown headaches to be significant public health problem.

A study from the United States reported that 27.3% of females and 13.9% of males suffer from severe headaches. Another study found that in one year headaches in the U.S. resulted in 74.2 million days of restricted work activity, costing an estimated $1.4 billion in lost productivity. Headaches are one of the most common reasons that people seek both medical and chiropractic treatment.

The Best Strategy

The most important aspect of treatment for tension headache sufferers is to relieve or improve the problem that causes the pain as quickly as possible with few, if any, side effects. In order to provide a through evaluation of treatment for tension headaches, many of the common options will be discussed. These include spinal manipulation, medication, psychological interventions, physical therapies, exercise, and occupational and lifestyle changes.

Scientific Data

A large study on tension headache yielded strong evidence for the effectiveness of spinal manipulation. This study showed significant decreases in the headache frequency, total headache pain, and over-the-counter medication use, with increase ability to function. In this study, patients who had at least one tension headache a week for at least three months were randomly assigned to receive either spinal manipulation treatment or Amitriptyline, a standard headache medication. Those in the spinal manipulation group were treated two times a week for six weeks; those in the Amitriptyline group were prescribed a six week course of the medication.

Patients in both groups improved during the treatment phase of this study, but four weeks after the treatment ended, the patients who had taken Amitriptyline went back to their pre-treatment headache status, while most of those treated with spinal manipulation maintained their improvements. Two other studies have tested the effects of spinal manipulation for treating tension headaches. While both showed benefits in the spinal manipulation groups, sample sizes were too small to demonstrate any statistically significant differences.

Spinal manipulation, which is basic to chiropractic treatment, is not generally used to treat each episode of tension headache but is used during a specific length of treatment time to control mechanical factors that lead to headaches. The length of treatment will vary depending on the patient's symptoms and the causes of the pain.

Want More?

Contact the office at 1-888-408-9323 for more information or simply fill out the form on the right and we'll contact you shortly.