Cervicogenic Headaches

Cervicogenic Headache

Headaches are extremely common in today's society, and while you may consider them a normal part of life, they don’t need to be. Infact, they are a sign your brain has reduced oxygen supply. Cervicogenic HA’s are the most common form of Headache

Headaches can come on after trauma, but are more commonly the result of years of poor posture. A human head weighs approximately 5 kg and when the head is forward that weight increases exponentially the forces in our neck and its joints.

Cause: Over time, forces on the neck squash the synovial fluid (joint lubricant) out of the joints of the cervical spine. Eventually the fluid in the joints decrease to a point where the joints can scratch together (this causes neck pain). Your body responds by tightening up the muscles over the joints to limit joint movement thereby limiting the scratching within the joints. Because a tight muscle is thicker than a loose muscle, extra pressure gets placed on the blood vessels taking oxygen to your brain. Like squashing a hose this restricts the blood flow with oxygen to the brain and that's what a cervicogenic headache is.

Treatment: Our treatment process aims to restore the synovial fluid back into the affected joints to stop them scratching allowing the joint surfaces to heal.

As the fluid increases, friction within the joint reduces thus reducing the pain. As this process continues and more fluid is restored to the joints, the muscles are no longer required to protect and therefore relax, returning to their normal resting state. A resting muscle is thinner and therefore no longer restricts the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain

The process of treatment occurs in 3 phases; firstly reduces pain, secondly enables healing and thirdly improves posture which is the initial cause of a Cervicogenic headache.

In conjunction, our treatment will equip you with advice and some simple tools to prevent Cervicogenic Headaches recurrence.