Good day,
Today I would like to comment on a recent course in Chiropractic neurology I just attended. The topic is head and face pain. For the vast majority of people this encompasses migraines, tension, cervicogenic headaches and more extremely trigeminal neuralgia. There may also be some individuals who suffer from Cluster headaches but these appear to be just severe forms of migraines. Here I would like to inform that many conditions/diagnoses presented to us are really just lists or descriptions of symptoms. A headache is a symptom of something going wrong. Pain also of any type is a symptom, a warning sign of the body. The culture at large wants us to believe that pain itself is a condition or diagnosis. So we have so many drugs that “block pain” or are “pain killers”. We forget that pain especially acute pain is a good alert for our brains saying don’t do that. Pain itself is physiologic nociception (sorry about the big words). It‘s when pain becomes suffering that it starts to change our lives.
Where it get’s really tricky is chronic pain. By the time most people go to see anyone for a headache or face pain there probably has been some plastic changes in the brain. This is where it’s truly important to get to the causes of your problem. It is so important to be examined properly for any functional disturbance in other areas of the nervous system. Why has chiropractic been so effective here. Adjusting the spine truly causes long term firing of certain neuron groups in the brain. Neck, upper back, and TMJ joints can all have direct influence over head and face pain. Many people have gone through expensive dental work or medication before finally having their neck and jaw examined by a skilled chiropractor. It is important for anyone with migraine’s to have their brainstem and cranial nerves “properly” examined and we have certain tests that let us know if yours is working well or not.
Another thought! Why is it that when you play a rough sport like hockey you feel no pain, but after six hours at work everything hurts? There appears to be a direct correlation between suffering and enjoyment.
Dr. Patrick Levesque DC DACNB
