physical migraine treatment Archives - Central Wellington - Severn Pain and Injury Care

3 Big Tips To Reduce Your Shoulder & Neck Pain

Tobias Hall — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 21:37:45 +0000

3 Big Tips To Reduce Your Shoulder & Neck Pain

Number 1) Quit Planking

There is no question that one can learn to plank and crunch in a way that is not harmful to the shoulders and neck, but that’s a whopper topic in and of itself that very few of us have the time and energy for. Planking and similar exercises like crunches involve an immense exertion of trunk strength, causing almost everybody to clench their shoulder and neck muscles. Excessive planking like this is risky for the lower spine. It is great to be able to work on your abs, and there’s no question that planking and crunches increase tone in the front of the abdominal wall, but the question is at what cost. Due to the amount of effort required in holding a plank, combined with our strong tendency to clench our neck and shoulders when exercising, it is almost a universal tendency to compress the delicate joints of the neck and compress the rotator cuff during trunk flexion exercises. This is a major cause of shoulder pain and neck pain.

If you are determined to have great abs but not to live with neck and shoulder pain, it is worth considering very gentle crunches with a small range of motion. Be sure to keep your chin on your chest and the tips of your shoulders down; you will be able to work on your abs without inflaming or aggravating your neck pain and shoulder pain tendencies. If you want to take this to black belt level, gently activate your pelvic floor the whole time you do the exercise; that way, your true core is activated too.

Number 2) Meditate

The most common cause of neck and shoulder pain is not whiplash injuries, and it’s not bad posture. The most common cause of stubborn neck and shoulder pain is persistent stress and mental overstimulation, which causes chronic tension and chronic clenching in the shoulder, neck and jaw muscles. Without realizing it, almost all of us tend to clench our neck and shoulder muscles when stressed or even when we are busy. The big challenge is that we do it unconsciously and are unaware that we do it. This means that the busyness and stress of life can translate into neck and shoulder pain without us even realizing it’s happening.

The easiest way to manage stress and chronic pains of muscle tension are to get out in front of them and meditate, particularly in the morning. If you are committed to getting rid of neck pain, shoulder pain and perhaps even headaches in the long term, get up 20 minutes earlier and do a guided meditation each morning. I promise you that if you persist with this habit, you will see a change in your happiness and a reduction in your pain. It can be frustrating to learn that there isn’t a magic bullet that can resolve your pain and neck pain in the long term. But once we move past that frustration and accept that we can just chip away at these things, it isn’t so bad. Also, there is a significant opportunity to become happier and healthier along the way, and we must work at it.

Number 2) Meditate

Number 3) Rehab

Many people suffer from neck and shoulder pain in our society, yet only a tiny percentage of us seek treatment each year. A recent study found between 30-50% of us will experience neck pain in any given year. Out of all 291 conditions studied in the Global Burden of Disease 2010 study, neck pain ranked 4th highest in terms of disability. If you went back to the 1600s and you asked almost anyone on the street, they would report that they had dental pain, and very few would have received any real treatment. Similarly, today we just put up with neck pain and shoulder pain. This is partly because we just aren’t sure what to do about it, much like people didn’t know what to do about tooth pain in the 1600s or even what caused it. The invitation here is to view your neck and shoulder pain like any dental pain you get and seek professional help for it with great urgency.

For most people, receiving treatment for neck and shoulder pain is the first step toward resolving pain in the long term. Admittedly, you may need to try out a few different practitioners before you find someone who can help you with neck and shoulder pain effectively, but it will be well worth the effort. Most neck and shoulder pain cases are at least partly underpinned by stubborn scar-like changes in the soft tissues, inflammation and locking of the spinal joints. The resolution of these changes in the neck and healing of these soft tissues is the cornerstone of resolving neck pain and shoulder pain. Then once you are comfortable, there are plenty of self-care options like those above, which will assist with the longer term.

Migraine Headache Truth Bombs

Tobias Hall — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 23:07:38 +0000

Migraine Headache Truth Bombs

If we are honest, modern medicine has drawn a complete blank regarding the real cause of Migraines. You may have noticed that the contemporary disease model of healthcare has fallen flat on its face when it comes to identifying the cause and effectively managing Headaches.

When we give into the use of painkillers for any condition, it is on some level like admitting defeat. If I could resolve your pain at the root cause, I would, but if I cannot, I admit defeat and offer you some analgesic relief. If you have significant pain that I don’t know how to fix, all I have left is to reduce your pain. So in some sense, painkillers are palliative care for Migraines, tension headaches and cluster headaches.

The good news is that there are answers to the headache riddle. Admittedly, these are not easily studied or measured by modern science, but they are answers we can use in daily life to significant effect. Whilst further research has been conducted at a very, very slow pace, suppose you, like many, feel uncomfortable with treatments that have yet to be proven. In that case, it is worth acknowledging that we were feeding children cod liver oil for about 1000 years before anybody knew what omega-3 was, and it worked just fine long before the scientific realisation. We can figure things out effectively without putting on our white coats.

Now the real bombshell about migraines, in particular, is that they are caused partly by the neck and partly by problems with the liver. Many migraine sufferers find it very easy to understand that their headache comes from their neck because they’ve already felt there was a problem in the neck. But it is generally a bit harder to understand at first brush how or why the liver might be involved in the generation of migraines and headaches.

The ultimate sciencey truth about how the liver is involved with migraines is another example of our feelings and understanding. I am not claiming to understand exactly how that works, either. Yet, simple observation can reveal such a theory’s plausibility. When was the last time you had a hangover? Hopefully, your most recent hangover is in your most distant past, and you can’t recall what it felt like. If, however, like me, you do remember your most recent hangover quite vividly, you may recall that a headache was one, if not the critical point of suffering. Most hangovers involve a certain amount of tiredness, possibly a bit of nausea and vomiting in dire cases. Still, the real hallmark of grief when it comes to the majority of hangovers is the headache.

Knowing alcohol as well as we do, it is common knowledge that the liver gets hit hardest, and probably the rest of the digestive tract. Hence, vomiting and nausea are the body’s attempts to remove toxins and the pounding headache resulting from having an unhappy liver. You get a headache every time you have a severe hangover because your liver has been impacted. This simple first-person observation can at least help you get a glimpse into how the liver plays a role in Headaches.

The neck portion of migraine headaches is, to some degree, a bit easier to unpack. If you have a great deal of tension and inflammation deep inside the tissues of your neck, those tissues are documented as having very intimate connections with the sensory nerves to the head. Hence headaches that emanate from issues deep inside the neck are a well-documented and well-understood phenomenon. That is relatively easy to observe for most but perhaps not all migraine headache, cluster headache and tension headache sufferers. In the same way that pain deep inside your back causes sciatic pain to go down the leg due to the complexity of our nerve pathways, having problems deep in the neck can cause headaches and migraines for similar reasons.

So the great news is that both livers and necks can heal. Although both require different types of love, both are pretty amenable to care, and both respond very well to treatment and all but the rarest cases in our experience. The neck of headache and migraine sufferers requires some longer-term healing, rehabilitation and possibly a look at why he became so tight in the first place. The liver of headache and migraine sufferers usually involves some level of detox and also to review of what possible reasons could’ve led to it becoming troubled.

For those who are under the belief that the only valuable things we can do are driven by hard, up-to-date science, this will feel a little frustrating. And I can certainly empathise with that; I prefer entirely data-driven things. But the reality is our science at this stage is limited, and the funds we are willing to put into studying issues like migraine will also be minimal. So we are left with the choice of admitting defeat and managing our headaches and migraines with painkillers. Or we draw on expertise that has been tested in the real world for hundreds if not thousands of years and which also will continue to yield excellent results in the real world today.

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Three Steps for a Pain Free Future

Tobias Hall — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 23:52:14 +0000

Three Steps for a Pain Free Future

It is common knowledge that we struggle profoundly with certain aspects of healthcare, especially when it comes to prevention. If I told you that we struggle with preventing and treating mental health issues as we do with obesity, it probably wouldn’t raise many eyebrows. It is less well known that we struggle just as much with preventing and treating chronic pain as we do with obesity and mental health. Given how much our culture struggles with treating and preventing chronic pain, the number of cases we find responding exceptionally well to straightforward pain management strategies at our clinic is surprising. Most people who come to us with chronic shoulder, back, hip, and foot pain respond exceptionally well to the same fundamental approach to managing pain.

Here is a simplified overview of what that process looks like;

Step One: Get an Accurate Diagnosis

If you are looking to get out of pain, you need to know exactly where the pain is originating. You need to know precisely which of your body tissues has become inflamed or degenerated. It is not enough to know that you have mechanical lower back pain; you must determine which tissues are causing that pain.

It’s not enough to know that you have sciatica; you need to know what is putting pressure on the sciatic nerve. It’s not enough to know that you have rotator cuff issues; it’s essential to determine which rotator cuff tendon is hurting and what is putting pressure on it.

If you can go from knowing that you have sciatic pain to knowing that your sciatic pain is due to your piriformis muscle spasming and putting pressure on the sciatic nerve, you have the basis of some treatment that may bring rapid relief. If you only know that the pain is sciatic, it is tough to know precisely how to get out of it. Once you have identified which structures need treatment, followed by getting the correct treatment, it is often astonishing how quickly even the most stubborn and chronic pains can be reduced.

Step One: Get an Accurate Diagnosis

Step Two: Get Consistent Treatment

If you have had shoulder pain, hip pain or back pain for a long time, it stands to reason that that issue is not going to heal overnight, even once you have found the correct treatments. Much like going to the gym, tissue healing means putting in repetitions. You can’t get a six-pack in three gym visits, and you can’t heal chronic pain in three treatment sessions. Once you have found the right treatments, it is typical for healing to take 3-6 months for most chronic pains. Of course, some outliers heal very fast, and those who heal slower, but 3-6 months is a pretty good timeframe to reduce pain to a manageable level in those who have struggled for a long time. Amazingly, the body can sometimes hold pain, degeneration, and repetitive strain for decades and still do a great deal of healing within six months. But it seldom does that without a very significant level of effort from both the patient and the practitioners.

When patients come to us with the most stubborn pains, we often work on them twice a week for the first three months of their care and sometimes reduce that to once a week for another three months. It can feel like a lot of work at the time, but of course, it’s more than worth it if I get you out of pain. It is also not a great deal of work compared with how long these issues take to manifest. It is frustrating to go through so much inconvenience and expense to get pain-free. It can be like the combination of hassles involved with a weight loss journey and getting a bunch of dental work done simultaneously. But let’s face it, what were the chances of chronic pain being something that would go away easily given how much we still struggle with it in our modern microchipped world.

Step Two: Get Consistent Treatment

Step Three: Get Strong

A significant part of why so many of us have the stubborn pains we do is because we are so inactive. It’s not our fault. We needn’t beat ourselves up because the world we were born into requires us to sit to survive and feed ourselves. Our Ancestors needed to run around to survive, and now we need to sit to survive. The massive popularity of the physiotherapy approach to pain with exercise prescription is a nod to the fact that this is common knowledge. When you constantly sit, muscles in your body waste or atrophy. This process is accelerated in body parts that carry chronic pain and or a history of injuries. The hard part, however, is following through in the long term. Everybody wants to do their exercises while still in pain, and a tiny percentage of people still want to do the exercises once their pain is gone. Yet when the pain goes away, the real Mahi must begin for those who wish to be pain-free in the long term.

If appropriately taught to isolate the areas and muscles you need to restore; the good news is that strengthening long-term rehab can be done with as little effort as is involved with looking after your teeth. Ten minutes a day is plenty if you’re isolating the right muscles.

Conclusion

We struggle with the treatment and prevention of chronic pain, but this doesn’t necessarily imply that the solutions will ultimately be complex. The absence of electric cars on the planet calls for intricate and clever solutions. However, the prevalence of chronic pain on earth doesn’t necessarily mean we need high technology or particularly complex solutions. Many of our struggles as a species are caused by oversight rather than the absence of high technology. Although we struggle with chronic pain, resolving it is seldom rocket science. Like so many of life’s problems, simple, systematic, commonsense solutions applied steadily over time are the key to success in the long term; that’s how you manage pain!!!

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11 Physical Treatment Options To Relieve Migraine Headaches

Tobias Hall — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 02:29:20 +0000

11 Physical Treatment Options To Relieve Migraine Headaches

Migraine headaches are at their best, infrequent and passing, and at their worst a source of chronic pain that can seem almost impossible to treat and manage. The World Health Organisation (1) records that 30% of adults aged 18 to 65 experience at least one migraine headache per year. Within that number, 4% are chronically impacting adults up to every two weeks.

When it comes to a migraine, finding its cause and trigger can be challenging.

Migraine headaches are influenced by many factors (2), including (but not limited to) age, hormonal changes, stress, dietary habits, sleep pattern and physical strain. Studies have noted an increasing prevalence of migraine headaches in women and adults in their 30’s. (3) On top of that, a set treatment may not work for everyone.

So while you may be quick to reach out for over-the-counter medications and spend the day in bed, don’t be defeated just yet. Exploring various forms of physical treatment can be an efficient way to manage your migraines. And in this blog, we break down the 11 most efficient options.

1. Spinal Manipulation

Many headache sufferers are aware of the role their neck plays in the onset of symptoms. Your cervical spine (located at the back of your neck) contains bones, soft tissues, and vertebrae that are connected within the suboccipital area of your head. (4) The nerves and muscles found in this part of the body can be the source of migraine headaches. Spinal manipulation can help target, mobilise and release the inflammation triggering neck tension and discomfort. Preliminary studies (5) noted that this type of physical treatment could alleviate migraines.

1. Spinal Manipulation

2. Shockwave Therapy

Shockwave therapy is a non-invasive treatment that has been popularly linked (6) with chronic pain reduction. This therapy involves a targeted series of low-energy wave pulsations applied to the body to relieve muscle knot and nerve inflammation in the neck, which can cause migraines. The specific tissues that cause your migraine will determine whether Shockwave is helpful in your particular case.

2. Shockwave Therapy

3. Acupuncture and Dry Needling

Acupuncture and dry needling treatments can help reduce muscle spasms, boost blood flow, and increase the discharge of pain-relieving chemicals in the body. Many studies (7) have shown these non-invasive practices’ efficiency at reducing and preventing migraine headaches.

3. Acupuncture and Dry Needling

4. Myofascial Trigger Point Release

A myofascial trigger point is a sensitive and tender spot that can be found in muscles (you know the ones). The neck and jaw can be impacted by an inflamed trigger point and lead to migraine headaches. Treating a trigger point with a myofascial release technique that includes physical pressure and gentle manipulation can efficiently help ease pain. (8)

4. Myofascial Trigger Point Release

5. Percussion Massage

Similar to a myofascial trigger point release, a percussion massage targets trigger points and muscle spasms in the neck to alleviate a migraine headache. This technique involves non-invasive vibrating tools and hands-on manipulation that have shown (9) to provide neurological benefits after ongoing treatment.

5. Percussion Massage

6. Low-Energy Laser Therapy

When it comes to migraine headaches, an inflammatory change in the muscles, nerves or soft tissues is often at play. Low-energy laser therapy penetrates a painful area with low-energy light waves to relieve acute pain and inflammation. (10)

6. Low-Energy Laser Therapy

7. Scar Tissue Release

Scar tissue can develop as a result of injuries, but also gradually due to chronic strain. (11) . Either can nurture neck and headache pain linked to the injuries. While it is hard to connect scar tissues and migraine headaches, physical injuries have a ripple effect within the body that can trigger nerves and muscles spasm linked to migraines. Physical therapy can be a gentle way to reduce pain, release adhesion, and decrease congestion of scar tissues.

7. Scar Tissue Release

8. Jaw Mobilisation

Emotional stress often influences tension and jaw clenching, which can build up into inflammation in the temporomandibular joint and cause migraine headaches. Jaw mobilisation aims to release this tension and stiffness linked to the ear, cheek, and jawline. A jaw mobilisation treatment can be beneficial for tension induced headaches and migraines. (12)

8. Jaw Mobilisation

9. Meditation and Therapy

In many (most?) cases, migraine headaches are influenced by patterns of stress and emotional overload. Thanks to their benefits to the nervous system, regular meditation and cognitive behavioural therapy have been scientifically proven (13) to be powerful at soothing and reducing migraine recurrence.

9. Meditation and Therapy

10. Exercise and Stretching

Gentle exercises and stretching performed on the neck or painful area decreases pressure and increase mobility linked to the cervical spine. (14) This is an efficient way to relieve inflammation of the nerves and muscles and, as a result, alleviate migraine headaches.

10. Exercise and Stretching

11. Prevention

If you’re suffering from chronic migraines, preventive and ongoing treatment can help reduce the recurrence of painful episodes. The type of physical treatment provided will highly depend on the root cause of your migraine.

Migraine headaches can be triggered in many ways, it’s complex – but medicating your way through them is not always the answer. Holistic care can help manage migraines long-term in a non-invasive way. The trick is to find the treatment that will target your root cause. And an expert team of therapists like ours can help you do that.