Headaches

Headaches are a common complaint amongst patients in physical therapy. They have been correlated with jaw and neck pain, however there are a variety of other bodily regions that can contribute to this outcome. Believe it or not, there are explanations for pain in other places that also explain headaches.

Motion at the neck is a great way to determine the cause for headaches. The vertebrae in your neck attach to the base of your head, and if those vertebrae are not moving sufficiently that may place focal stresses anywhere they attach to. An example that resonates with most folks is the position we all tend to acquire as we sit at a computer for long periods of time. Some parts of your neck may sink forward, while your head fails to keep up, compressing the back of your head down toward your neck. Musculature in this region gets more active and amplifies the position, which can eventually lead to an ache. That ache tends to travel up over your head, landing on your eyeballs. Most often this is called a tension headache. The muscles on the back of your head contain a direct attachment to those at your forehead, resulting in the tension.

Let’s take a look at the far away land of the foot. Foot position during walking has a large impact on how forces travel through the body. If you land on a small region of your foot, limiting the surface area that makes contact with the ground, then focal pressures are created. If this pattern persists all the way up to your neck, the position described above can develop. If enough time passes in this position, it becomes the default and may eventually lead to compression of tissues beyond their level of comfort.

Any structure between the foot and the top of your head can lose its adaptability. Thankfully we have redundant anatomical systems in place to manage losses like this. There are times when those systems have been exhausted, and pain can arise. Keeping the entire chain in mind we can make changes that alter how forces and pressures are mitigated, which in the end may resolve the problem at hand.

Austin Ulrich, Physical Therapist