Odds are that you have experienced one: throbbing headache, worse on one side more than the other? Visual disturbances, nausea, sensitivity to sound? A tight belt squeezing your head in?
An estimated 20% of North Americans will experience migraine headaches in their lifetime. Odds are you might have too and if you are suffering in Toronto, there is help available.
It’s really important to differentiate between the cause of a migraine and what actually triggers it? I’ll hear patients in Toronto say, “I had some chocolate last night, “chocolate always causes migraines. “Chocolate is the cause of my migraines.” The same goes for changes in the weather and red wine!
All these factors can be a trigger of a migraine. Even posture can be the trigger of a migraine. Triggers are not causes, however!
If they were the cause, then everyone sat with bad posture would get a migraine… and that would be A LOT of people. And obviously, that’s not what happens.
Harvard Medical School has developed a theory for a three-step mechanism that causes migraines. It describes what happens in the neck that leads to changes in the brain and spine that actually CAUSE a migraine.
- First, there is a misaligned of vertebrae in the neck.
- The misaligned vertebrae put pressure on the adjacent nerves and cause local blood vessels to fill up with blood. This diverts blood away from the brain
- Blood vessels in the brain detect that the brain is being starved of oxygen and in an emergency fashion, dramatically expand to increase blood flow.
The throbbing sensation you experience with a migraine is believed to be from this rapid blood vessel expansion and increased blood flow.
As a headache sufferer, I would want to know how to reduce triggers that lead to my migraines. But what I would want even more it to know how to prevent them from coming back in the future!
If you are reading this post I know you would love to correct the underlying cause so you can get back to doing all the things you love to do…better than how you are doing them right now?
I want you to consider that the further back you go in the actual chain of events, the more long-term, and the more permanent, the more effective the treatment will be for you.
According to Harvard Medical School, it’s a misalignment of the top three bones in the neck. As a chiropractor, that’s what I deal with all day, every day.
Here’s what I’d like you to do next. I want you to share this information on Facebook or by email. You might have some friends that suffer from migraines and you don’t realize they have them. And when they see this post, they can get some of the information that they need.
If you are a migraine headache sufferer – give our office a call, ask for a consultation to discover if we can help. To be perfectly honest – not everyone who has migraines can be helped by Chiropractic…but most can.
Call us a find out if we can help you. (416) 920-7275
