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Migraine Headache Doctor in Littleton, Colorado Discusses Chiropractic for Migraines

Innovative Chiropractic Care Can Help Lessen Migraine Headaches

If you have suffered from a migraine before, you must understand how hard it is to find a good, effective specialist treatment before it becomes a nuisance that makes life harder and handling responsibilities a nightmare.

The symptoms of a migraine, which include loss of appetite because of nausea, extreme sensitivity to light, and throbbing pain incapacitate most people, and is something that may be affecting a good number of your patients. 

In America, the number of people who experience or have migraines is quite amazing. According to a research handled by the Migraine Research Foundation, about 1:4 U.S households has an individual who experiences migraines from time to time. This is more than 10% of the nation’s population – including both children and adults.

Of these number, a greater majority who suffer migraines are women. The current statistic shows that there are 3 time more women suffering from migraines than men – that is 18% for women versus 6% for women. Migraines often strike adults when they are between 25 and 55 years of age; which is the time most of us are at the peak productivity years of our lives. As a result, many American employers are losing, or end up losing, billions of dollars each and every year because of lost work days. 

The chiropractic connection and how your neck may be affecting your migraines

With these numbers in mind, it should be clear to you as a chiropractor what this data represents. It shows that a large number of people might profit from the kind of care you can provide through your migraine treatment options.

There is a good number of research papers that support the idea that chiropractic spinal manipulation, as a method of treating migraines, actually does work better than the standard form of treatment like pharmacotherapy; drugs. Cervicogenic headaches are headaches that arise from structures in the neck; nerves, vessels, muscles, and joints that are stressed, tight, misaligned or abnormally functioning in some way.

However, a majority of these papers do not actually specify which type of adjustment is, or should be, used as they mainly focus on chiropractic spinal manipulation as a whole compared to the standard forms of treatment. Nonetheless, there are a couple of papers that actually compare the treatment of chronic migraines using manual as opposed to instrument-based forms of adjustment. At Alternative Physical Medicine, in Littleton, CO the doctors or nurse practitioner may use other treatments other than adjusting the spine in order to help the symptoms of migraine-type headaches. Sometimes there is a metabolic or hormonal component to the symptoms that must be addressed (usually by a functional medicine metabolic blood panel). Sometimes a therapeutic laser can help to provide a cure to the symptoms, sometimes brain-based treatments may be used at the clinic.

What Research Reveals

There are several case studies that discuss spinal manipulation using instruments to treat migraines. Meta-analyzing these studies one can see that they add strength to what researchers have found. An article done in 2012, and which featured on a Canadian Chiropractic Association journal, examines results obtained from eight smaller studies with the aim of finding common links.

At the end of their examination, the authors came to a conclusion that adjustments done using instruments provided more clinically-meaningful benefits to patients as compared to HVLA or high-velocity, low-amplitude manual manipulations or trigger point therapies. 

An earlier piece printed on Manipulative and Physiologic Therapeutics’ journal compared two patient groups receiving cervical spine treatment, which is the common cause of migraines. One of the test groups had the manual form of HVLA adjustment done on them while the other had instrument adjustments done. After 8 treatment, researchers came to a conclusion that instrument-assisted adjustment of the cervical spine was just as beneficial to the patient when it comes to improving cervical spine dysfunctions, which include migraines. 

Often, people who suffer migraines thing that they may never get to find relief for the pain. The good thing however is that chiropractic therapy is not only an effective way of remedying the problem, but is also a safer treatment alternative. However, it is important to note that instrument-assisted adjustments of the cervical spine can be more beneficial, and effective, to the patient than manual applications. 

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