Headaches Archives - Rehab Advantage & Sports Medicine

Dealing With Stress-Related Headaches? Here’s 3 Ways Physical Therapy Can Help!

Don’t Let Chronic Headaches Get In The Way Anymore.

Did you know that headaches are the third most common pain complaint? It’s true. Headaches are extremely common and can be so debilitating to the point that they impact a person’s quality of life. Dealing with headaches on the daily alone can be very isolating and leave a person feeling exhausted.

Fortunately, through physical therapy, long term relief is possible. A trained physical therapist can help you achieve immediate pain relief from stress-related headaches as well as any other pain conditions or ailments that may be contributing to your discomfort. Below we have outlined the different types of headaches and the causes for them, and explain how physical therapy can help.

Types of Headaches

Most people experience headaches as they grow older. Many headaches go away on their own and don’t need medical intervention. However, severe headaches that recur frequently and interfere with quality of life often demand attention from a professional.

First, you must identify the type of headache you’re experiencing. Then from there, a comprehensive treatment plan can be created according to your specific needs for pain relief. Physical therapists are skilled at diagnosing different types of headaches and can develop simple strategies for pain relief from stress-related headaches.

Below are 10 common types of headaches, according to Healthline.

Cluster
Hormone
Caffeine
Migraine or sinus
Stress (tension)
Post-traumatic
Exertion
Rebound
Hypertension

If you’re unsure what kind of headache you’re experiencing, no problem! Your physical therapist will be able to diagnose and treat it accordingly.

What Are Tension Headaches?

Tension headaches often appear as a result of high-stress levels, poor posture, neck or jaw problems, fatigue, or arthritis. It’s also possible to experience them when feeling anxious or depressed.

Tension headaches occur when the neck and scalp muscles contract or become tense, and people can start experiencing them at any age, although they’re the most common type of headache in adults and older teens.

Stress-related headaches generally start at the back of the head and progress to the top of the head and eyes. Sometimes, you may even feel pain on your face along your jaw and cheeks when experiencing this kind of headache. Many people have compared this type of pain to wearing a tight hat, having their hair tightly pulled back, or having their head squeezed.

How Can a Physical Therapist Help Reduce Stress-Related Headache Pain?

A licensed physical therapist can conduct a complete physical exam of your body and condition, as well as ask you the appropriate questions regarding your health history. He or she will be able to figure out what type of headache you’re experiencing and determine the best way to combat it and bring much-needed pain relief.

During your first visit, you can expect most of the following:

Manual therapy to ascertain the mobility of joints and muscles in your neck
Examination of your posture while engaged in different activities
Tests of your muscle strength
Questions regarding previous injuries to your back, jaw, and head areas
Questions about the types of pain symptoms experienced
Measurements regarding the range of motion of your shoulders, neck and other relevant parts of the body

Depending on whether your physical therapist determines that you’re dealing with stress-related headaches, you will begin to work together to create a care plan that will successfully meet your physical health goals. If your physical therapist’s evaluation determines a different type of headache, he or she will likely refer you to a different type of healthcare professional for treatment.

3 Improvements Physical Therapy Can Make To Reduce Headaches

Although the end goal of physical therapy is pain relief, there are some critical things along the way that your physical therapist will help you address so that you can achieve a decrease in pain.

Some of These Include:

Posture improvement. How your posture is held during the day significantly impacts your pain levels and the likelihood of experiencing a stress-related headache. Your physical therapist will teach you how to improve your posture for a greater quality of life.
Adjusting the way your neck moves. Your physical therapist can use manual therapy to stretch muscles in your neck to relieve pain and increase range of motion.
Improved strength and muscle ability. You’ll learn exercises to help strengthen the muscles that control your upper back and neck. This way your posture will improve, and you’ll be able to sit or stand for long periods without experiencing pain and discomfort.

Methods of Pain Relief

Every individual’s treatment plan is different, but many physical therapists use a lot of the same methods. A few examples are soft tissue mobilization, heat or ice compressions, muscular releases, cervical traction, body mobilization, stretching, strengthening, muscle energy techniques, and McKenzie-based diagnosis and therapy of the spine.

With all treatment plans, you can expect to receive information that will supplement your in-office experience. This way you’ll be able to continue strengthening your muscles at home on your own and speed up your recovery time!

Contact Our Office Today

There’s no reason you need to continue living in constant pain and discomfort with so many treatment options available to you. Contact Rehab Advantage & Sports Medicine today to experience long-lasting pain relief from stress-related headaches and improve your quality of life!

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Say Goodbye to Your Stress-Related Headaches!

If stress-related headaches are happening so frequently that they are impacting your daily life, it’s time to start thinking about physical therapy for relief. Stress-related headaches, also called tension headaches, are the most common type of headache that impacts people. While they are not as serious as migraines, tension headaches are a sign that something in your body is “off.” Rehab Advantage and Sports Medicine can work with you to determine the cause and eliminate stress-related headaches for good.

Causes of Stress-Related Headaches

One of the main causes of stress-related headaches is right there in the name: stress. The headache generally happens when the muscles in the neck or scalp become tense and contract. Depression and anxiety are similar emotions to stress that can also lead to headaches. In addition, there may be a physical cause behind your stress-related headaches. An accident or injury to the neck or back can contribute to headaches. Poor posture and arthritis are two other potential causes.

Diagnosing Your Headaches with a Physical Therapist

Before your physical therapy treatments begin, your physical therapist will work with you to diagnose your headaches. You’ll need to discuss your medical history with the physical therapist. If you sustained an injury to your neck, back or jaw years ago, it could still be contributing to headaches to this day. The location where you experience pain, such as in the face, back of the neck or forehead, can also help to diagnose the source.

Your physical therapist will likely run you through some tests as part of the diagnosis phase. For example, your posture will be checked as you engage in several activities. The strength of your muscles and the range of motion in your neck and shoulders will be tested. Your therapist might do some manual therapy to see how mobile your neck joints are. Once the cause of your stress-related headaches is determined, a customized course of physical therapy can be prescribed to treat them.

Physical Therapy for Stress-Related Headaches

The treatment of your stress-related headaches will depend in part on the diagnosis. For example, one course of treatment that would work for correcting your posture and strengthening the neck muscles might not be appropriate if your headaches are the result of a past injury. In general, you can expect stretching and strength training to be part of your treatment. Other options that your physical therapist might employ can include:

Soft tissue mobilization
Hot and cold compressions
Body mobilization
Cervical traction
McKenzie therapies

Aside from your physical therapy sessions at the clinic, your therapist will also recommend exercises, stretches and lifestyle changes that you can make at home, which will all contribute to eliminating your headaches.

Benefits of Physical Therapy for Headaches

The ultimate goal of your physical therapy regimen will be to eliminate your stress-related headaches. However, in addition to relief, you will gain additional benefits that will likely improve your overall quality of life:

Improved Strength: Your therapist will teach you exercises to strengthen your neck and upper back, which will lead to improved posture. With better posture, you will be able to stand and sit longer without experiencing discomfort.
Reduced Neck Tension: You will have better range of motion in your neck and reduced tension, thanks to manual physical therapy techniques applied to the muscles there.
Better Posture: Bad posture is really one of the leading causes of stress-related headaches. If you don’t enjoy good posture throughout the day, it is likely to lead to more generalized aches and pains, as well as the muscle tension that contributes to stress-related headaches.

What are you waiting for? Stress-related headaches can be a thing of the past for you, after working with a physical therapist to correct the problem. Contact Rehab Advantage and Sports Medicine today to schedule your first appointment.

Say Goodbye to Your Stress-Related Headaches, Once and For All

Are you tortured by headache pain morning, noon and night, day after day? Does emotional and/or physical stress always seem to trigger a headache? If so, you’re one of the many Americans who suffer from stress-related or tension headaches. These headaches have own distinctive style, and some of their underlying causes may actually surprise you. If you’re ready to tackle those underlying causes so you can relieve your headaches without turning to drugs, physical therapy might hold your answers. Contact Rehab Advantage & Sports Medicine today in Dublin, GA — our physical therapist will be happy to help you feel better!

What Are Tension Headaches?

The emotional and physical stresses of modern everyday life seem to go hand-in-hand with headache pain. For some people, stress can even serve as a trigger for fearsome migraine attacks, which cause not only blinding headaches but other issues such as vision problems, vomiting, and faintness. But for the majority of us, the word “headache” refers to a tension headache.

Tension headaches are well named, but not always for the reasons you might suspect. They actually begin, not in the head, but in the muscles of the neck or shoulders. If these muscles become chronically tense and tight, they tend to go into spasm. This is bad news for the dura mater, a pain-sensitive membrane attached to certain small muscles near the base of the skull. The tight muscles pull on the dura mater, which causes it to refer pain signals up into the head.

Symptoms and Causes of Tension Headaches

Tension headaches can vary widely in severity, although they’re rarely as debilitating as migraines. They tend to a generalized ache over a broad region of the head, as opposed to attacking a specific area such as the eye (a trademark of another type of headache called a cluster headache). The tension that brings them on may stem from emotional stress (if that emotional stress creates chronic neck tightness), but it may also be caused by:

Weak neck muscles that become fatigued easily
“Text neck,” a strain disorder that occurs if you’re always drooping your head forward to look at your smartphone
Repetitive motion or overuse from work or sports activities
Secondary pain problems such as arthritis in the cervical spine

Tension headaches that bother you for more than 15 days out of the month for 3 months or more are considered a chronic pain condition.

How Physical Therapy Can Help With Tension Headaches

Over-the-counter pain relievers may reduce the symptoms of stress-related headaches for a few hours, but they do nothing about the stresses and strains that are making those headaches recur day after day. If you want a more lasting solution, physical therapy is a good place to start. Our physical therapist will administer an examination to see whether you’re dealing with tension headaches or with some other type of headache that requires a specialist’s attention. Physical therapy strategies for treating tension headaches include:

Exercises to strengthen your neck muscles, allowing them to hold the weight of your head more evenly and with less strain
Postural and ergonomic advice to help you get rid of any bad habits that might be causing “text neck”
Flexibility exercises, manual therapy, heat therapy and/or ice therapy
Stress reduction measures such as yoga, lifestyle changes, and advice on how to reduce common stress triggers in your life.

Take action to stop those stress-related headaches from taking over your life. Call Rehab Advantage & Sports Medicine today and schedule an appointment with our skilled physical therapist!

Get Rid of Your Constant Stress-Related Headaches With Physical Therapy

We all do it – we feel that all-too-familiar twinge of a headache coming on, and we pop in the Ibuprofen or Advil or Tylenol. However, sometimes a pill just doesn’t cut it when it comes to stress headaches. The sensation of a stress headache is described as a band of pressure around your head, in addition to a generalized aching and tenderness.

Fortunately, physical therapy treatments can provide relaxation and posture correction, in order to relieve your pain. You’ll not only experience relief of your current headache, but the probability of sustaining future stress headaches will likely decrease. To find out more about how Rehab Advantage & Sports Medicine can help relieve your stress-related headaches, contact our Dublin, GA office today.

A hands-on approach to headaches:

There are some headache prevention techniques that are simple enough to do at home. However, a physical therapist can provide a much more targeted approach to treating the symptoms of a headache. For example, alternating between ice and heat therapies is a simple but effective strategy. The specialized compresses and gentle electronic pulse wands provide soothing relief, in addition to easing muscle strain.

Manual therapy also includes massage for stress-related headache treatment, because the soft tissue mobilization relaxes tense muscles. Because of this effect, massage can provide immediate pain relief and can even prevent future headaches. PT massage treatments help to relax the muscles in your jaw, temples, neck, and shoulders, in order to lessen your symptoms.

In addition, patients with chronic tension headaches report decreased incidents of head pain when undergoing regular massage therapy. It is believed that relaxing the muscles in and around the head helps in preventing the contractions that result in pain.

Physical therapy massage also helps ease the emotional stress that causes you to tense those trigger muscles. People who get regular therapeutic massages also report getting better rest, which leads to less stress during the day, and therefore a lowered likelihood of sustaining a stress-related headache.

Correcting your posture:

It is no secret that the ways in which we stand and sit can greatly influence how much pressure is put on our muscles. Poor posture compresses muscles and nerves, and for many people, these overworked muscles and nerves in the shoulder, chest, and neck area can lead to a triggered tension headache.

Your physical therapist can help evaluate your posture for areas that may need improvement. He or she will also demonstrate the correct way to move, sit, and stand, in order to avoid unwanted compression.

In addition to demonstrating chest, back, and shoulder positions, a physical therapist can also recommend helpful lifestyle changes. Modifications to certain areas in the home and workplace often have a big effect on posture. This might include a telephone headset, a raised computer monitor, a specialized chair, or even a rubber mat to stand on while doing kitchen tasks.

Strengthening your muscles:

You do a lot of “heavy lifting” throughout the day with your shoulders, back, and neck – even when you are simply carrying out daily tasks. If the muscles in those areas are too weak, they can easily get overworked. Physical therapy work on neck and upper back muscles involves resistance training, in order to build up the muscles.

For many people, stronger upper body muscles also equate to fewer – and less intense – stress-related headaches. Exercises might start with simple chin-to-chest nods to build neck strength, and may become more intensive as your treatment plan progresses. Free weights and resistance bands also help to build up shoulder and back muscles.

Improving your flexibility:

The more that you’re able to move your neck and shoulders as you move through your day, the less pressure you put on the major muscle groups in those areas. This may also alleviate some of your undesirable stress-related headache symptoms. By participating in physical therapy treatments, you will learn specific moves to stretch your neck, in addition to loosening up your chest, shoulder muscle, and tendon groups. Doing these regularly can help relieve chronic stress headaches.

Contact us for relief:

If you’d like to learn more about relieving the frequency and severity of your chronic stress-related headaches, contact our Dublin, GA office today. We’ll set up an evaluation to examine and discuss your specific challenges. From there, one of our physical therapists will design an individualized course of treatment that is specific to your needs, in order to help you relax your muscles, get better sleep, and fight off some of those debilitating stress headaches.

How Physical Therapy can Put an End to Nagging Headaches

Hobbled by Chronic Headaches? Physical Therapy May Hold Your Answers

The minute you feel that familiar pain and pressure coming on, you know you’re in for a bad time. Headaches are regrettable commonplace in today’s world, with 80 to 90 percent of Americans enduring a tension headache at some point or other. But while some headaches are caused by biochemical imbalances, hypertension, tumors or other causes, many of them are the direct result of musculoskeletal problems. Fortunately, physical therapy is tailor-made to address and correct musculoskeletal problems, including the issues behind chronic headache pain. Let’s examine how our physical therapist can help you get rid of those nagging headaches the natural way.

The Musculoskeletal Causes of Headaches

You’ve probably heard of tension headaches, but you may not realize that the tension refers, not to emotional tension, but to muscular tension in the neck. Although emotional tension can certainly promote this muscular tension, so can underlying physical imbalances, weaknesses or damage. A traumatic injury to the neck such as whiplash is a prime example, with torn neck muscles and strained connective tissues referring agonizing pain to the head, face and shoulders as well as the neck.

Tension Headaches and the Dura Mater

But the classic tension headache is caused by a more subtle form of strain. Repetitive motions or poor neck/head posture that place the neck muscles under constant strain may also pull upon a sensitive membrane known as the dura mater. The dura mater envelops the brain, and at the base of the skull, it lies in close proximity to small muscles such as the RCPM muscle. When these muscles go into spasm, the dura mater gets tugged – and it reacts by sending pain messages into the head.

Cervicogenic Headaches

Cervicogenic headaches are another kind of neck-related head pain. These headaches involve the topmost three vertebrae of the neck. Some cervicogenic headaches are caused by concussions or arthritis, but work-related strain is another potential trigger. People who typically droop their heads downward for many hours a day (hairdressers, long-haul drivers, smartphone addicts, etc.) are prone to these headaches.

Our Physical Therapist Can Provide Natural Headache Pain Relief

Drugs can’t do much more than offer pain relief for an isolated headache, which isn’t good enough if you suffer from chronic headache pain. Our physical therapist will start by evaluating your posture, asking you about your symptoms and medical history, and study X-rays or other diagnostic data from your primary care physician to figure out the biomechanical origins of your chronic headache problem. A detailed physical therapy program can then be formulated to address your specific musculoskeletal issues.

Physical therapy can relieve chronic headaches in a number of ways. Exercises to loosen, lengthen and relax the muscles of the neck can be highly effective at easing the spasms that set off tension headaches. You may also benefit from exercises such as the supra-clavicle release, which strengthens neck muscles weakened by postural imbalances. If tension in the fascia of the jaw or face are contributing to your neck tension and headaches, a lying-down posture with the relevant trigger points resting on a tennis ball can release that tension.

Exercises are only one aspect of physical therapy to relieve headaches. Our physical therapist may also prescribe massage therapy, ultrasound and lifestyle recommendations to help you stop sabotaging your neck and head in your everyday activities. This holistic approach can free you from your headache problem – as well as freeing you from a reliance on pain-relieving drugs.

Start Feeling Better – Talk to Our Physical Therapist

If you’re ready to enjoy serious, lasting headache pain relief, it’s time to talk to our physical therapist. Contact Rehab Advantage & Sports Medicine today!

Stress is nothing more than our reaction to a provocation that upsets our physical and/or mental equilibrium. Therefore, stress is an inevitable part of life. Nevertheless, when we are faced with stress, our “fight or flight” response can be triggered; this causes the production of hormones including adrenaline and cortisol to increase and rush through your body.