Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic and I want to talk today about headaches and chiropractic. Specifically, how chiropractic can help get rid of headaches.

Many headaches are caused in the neck, specifically right at the very top of the neck. So we have vertebrae and the spine here in the neck and this is the base of the skull. We have little nerves that come out of each level in between the vertebrae. When things get out of alignment or crooked and that can happen in a lot of different ways, it can happen from sports injuries or bad posture or bad pillow. When that happens, these nerves get compressed and the nerves at the very top of the spine when they are compressed, it will shoot pain up into the head causing headache.

Now the other thing that happens is that the muscles on the side of the neck will get really tight and try to splint that area and that causes pain as well. With gentle, specific correction of this area, which restores proper alignment, we take pressure off the nerve and the headache goes away and the muscles relax as well.

If you are experiencing headaches on a daily basis or even on a weekly basis, I suggest that you get your neck checked by a qualified chiropractor. It is a much better fix if we can eliminate what is actually causing the problem than to cover it up with drug therapy or injection therapy or something like that.