Get Rid of Your Headaches!
Sara Cook, Nutrition and Lifestyle Coach
Do you get headaches often? Are headaches stopping you from enjoying life? If this is true, something needs to be done. No one deserves to lose minutes, hours, or even days of his or her life because of a headache. There are many causes for headaches and many treatments for you to consider. Natural medicine can get to the root of your problem and numerous individuals who choose the natural medicine approach become headache-free forever. In contrast, many traditional treatments only provide temporary relief and patients with recurring headaches often use prolonged drug therapy treatment, which can lead to drug addiction. Some people are told that coffee and chocolate are the source of all headaches! Well, not exactly, but they determine that things like this cause headaches. For some people, they do. However, at Caring Medical we take a much more comprehensive approach.
What Causes Headaches and Migraines?
At Caring Medical, we employ the Natural Medicine approach which identifies some of the major causes of headaches to be weakened or injured ligaments, Barre-Lieou Syndrome, hormonal imbalances, allergies or combination of all of these. Let’s look at each of these causes in more detail.
Weak Ligaments
Weak ligaments in the neck can cause headaches. Neck, temporomandibular (jaw) joint (TMJ), ear, and mouth pain are caused from ligament laxity in these areas of the head. If headaches occur in conjunction with neck pain, they may be a result of loose or injured ligaments in the neck vertebrae, which can cause pain to be felt in the head area. Sometimes patients will say that their neck gets tense before their headache occurs. This usually means their neck ligaments are weak.
Prolotherapy is our recommended solution for headaches that are caused from weak neck ligaments, since neck ligaments are known to refer pain directly to the head. Many people sit at their desks all day at a computer. If they do not sit properly, they are causing strain on their neck muscles and ligaments, which then causes pain. Another case - someone might have had a whiplash from a car accident a long time ago and now gets headaches and does not know why. These headaches could also originate from the car accident. Whiplash can cause the neck ligaments to become weak and over stretched. A lot of people have neck injuries and they do not know it. A neck injury could very well be the culprit cause of your chronic headaches. The only way that we know of to cause ligaments to repair themselves is by using Prolotherapy. Prolotherapy stimulates the body to repair the painful, injured areas. Massage, chiropractic, acupuncture and other modalities will help, but they do not get to the underlying cause of the problem.
Barre-Lieou Syndrome
(Headache with Chronic Sinusitis/ Allergies)
Do you experience facial pain, ear pain, sinus congestion, fatigue, dizziness, or nausea or a combination of the above when your headaches occur? Any type of vertebral instability can affect the function of the nerve cells located in the front of the neck just in front of the vertebrae, causing a “pinching” of the nerves. Vertebral instability occurs because the ligaments that support the neck become injured. This can occur from whiplash injury or incorrect head forward posture. Not only do you experience neck and headache pain with whiplash injury or incorrect head posture, but also other symptoms of Barre-Lieou Syndrome.
The syndrome is caused by a group of nerves located by your vertebrae that become pinched because of the weakness or damage of your ligaments in your neck. The reason why you have several symptoms with your headaches is because this group of nerves is the cervical sympathetic nervous system, which is part of your autonomic nervous system. This system controls the head, neck, and face area. If the symptoms are due to Barre Lieou Syndrome, often, immediately after Prolotherapy injections to the posterior head and neck areas, patients who have had sinus trouble for years, experience clear breathing in their sinuses.
Individuals with Barre Lieou Syndrome often experience other symptoms such as blurred vision, severe fatigue, dysesthesias (pins and needles down the arm), low blood pressure, and low heart rate which are caused by a decrease in the output of the sympathetic nervous system of the head, neck, and face areas. Prolotherapy to the vertebrae in the neck is the treatment of choice to permanently eliminate Barre-Lieou Syndrome. Prolotherapy causes the vertebrae in the neck to move posteriorly (back) and no longer pinch the nerves.
Hormones
If you have a headache that occurs during your menstrual cycle, the headache is most likely related to a hormonal imbalance. During your menstrual cycle, women experience low progesterone levels. Headaches can be a symptom of these low progesterone levels. Taking natural progesterone during the appropriate times of the menstrual cycle can help relieve the problem. Here at Caring Medical we carry natural hormones and utilize them for supplementation for a variety of conditions. We will test your hormone levels to determine which hormones are low and then determine the correct dosage to give to you.
Allergies
Sometimes people get headaches when they eat a particular food, or during certain seasons, or when exposed to certain scents. If this happens, an allergic component is often the cause of your headaches. A food allergy could be the simple cause to your headaches. Getting a food allergy test will determine which foods you are allergic to.
Allergies to food additives can also cause headaches. Additives are chemicals that food companies put in our food so that we enjoy the taste and will want to buy more of their products. Even though these additives are harmful to our bodies, our government still allows food manufacturers to disguise our food. Here are some of the more common food additives to watch out for that could be causing your headaches! Stop eating foods with these additives and you could be headache free! (We recommend you stop eating them no matter if you get headaches from them or not!)
Acesulfame Potassium): (known commercially as Sunette and Sweet One. It is an artificial sweetener found in soft drinks, baked goods, chewing gum, instant coffee, gelatin, pudding, and non dairy creamers.
Buylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA) and Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT): are synthetic anti-oxidants used to retard rancidity in many packaged foods. Some companies have replaced BHA and BHT with ascorbic acid, citric acid, or vitamin E, due to the controversial association to increased cancer risks.
MSG: Monosodium Glutamate is a flavor enhancer found in many foods like soups, salad dressings, potato chips, parmesan cheese, frozen foods, restaurant foods, or sold alone in the spices section. This is a big one and can really reek havoc on you! Dining out in restaurants becomes very difficult because many of them still use MSG as a flavor enhancer. This is particularly true in Asian dining. We recommend that you ask your server whether the restaurant uses MSG. Request that it be removed from your food.
Olestra: Proctor and Gamble manufactured this product which is found in popular snack foods so the product can be labeled “Fat Free.” Technically, it is not “fat free”, rather just indigestible fat. Olestra cannot be digested by the body, so the indigestible fat runs through the body. It may interfere with the body’s ability to absorb fat-soluble cartenoids, such as alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, and lutein.
Sodium Nitrite: It is generally used as a preservative in bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch meats, smoked fish, and corned beef. It is also stabilizes the color in certain cured meat and gives a distinct flavor.
Sorbitol: is a sweet-tasting sugar alcohol used in many sugar-free candies, cake mixes, syrups, and other foods. It can also be found in some medicines.
Stevia: sugar substitute that is 100 times sweeter than sugar. Stevia is generally permissible.
Remember, sometimes a headache related to a food additive may produce a delayed reaction – IE a headache could develop days after you ingested the food!
The Role of Diet in Curing Headaches
Diet plays a critical role in establishing a patient's pH, and Diet Typing may be used to measure the pH of a patient’s blood, urine and saliva. Balancing a patient's pH is generally very helpful in eliminating migraine headaches, which can be accomplished with the appropriate diet for that individual.
In summary, treating migraines should involve not only Prolotherapy to address ligament and tendon laxity or injury issues, but additional natural treatments to address the other symptoms involved with most migraines.
The bottom line here is that the causes of headaches are multi-faceted. Come in for a natural medicine evaluation so that we can help you get to the bottom of it. You should not have to just “live with it!”
|
