No Links were listed yet. Go ahead and share!
How to Cope with Migraines Part 2/2
Of course we encountered patients who do not respond even when they have typical events and do not respond to standard therapies. Fortunately in Mary’s case, she was able to find a not so typical treatment that brought her rather dramatic results.
The headache circuits, the headaches or migraine and many of the other primary headaches actually travel from the head down into the upper neck and shoulder area. So, it's not at all unusual that people will encounter various sensitive zones in the shoulders or in the neck particularly, that may relate in some way to their headaches. In Mary’s case, what was very interesting and fortunate for Mary is that she found an acupuncturist who has alert and smart enough to address some of those circuits. In the presence of acupuncture therapy found the zone that was particularly helpful to relieve Mary’s headaches.
Mary’s acupuncturist had explained to her his thought that because a zone in the neck was particularly relevant to her headaches that it probably was that tension in her neck would provoke the headache. I would place a different explanation on that circumstance. I believe that we now know that because of the circuits that transmit from the head all the way down into the neck that there are zones which when touched or in some way therapeutically manipulated will provide relief. I don’t think that implies alone that the cause of her headache was the stress that would translate into her neck.
In fact, we find that many people with migraine or related conditions will actually have very tense necks but it's not that the tension in their necks produces the headache, it's that the mechanism on the brain which causes the headache actually causes a tightness to the muscles much likely when a person has a stroke. An event to the brain will produce spasm or spasticity on various parts of the body. Acupuncture in migraine has been studied in many large treatment studies and it has not been found to be effective in a large group of sufferers. However, for various reasons, some individuals will benefit because it's a benign treatment and because it does not cause any risk.
We would encourage people to at least give it a try if they are interested in that pursuit.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services