Yes, I know, we already know this and have talked about it before. However, there was a new study that came out that I wanted to share with you. I love that chiropractic care has been getting so much research over the past decade. Not only does it help explain to patients and bring awareness to what conditions chiropractic care can help, but it also validates chiropractic as a part of the medical community. For years the complaint was there isn’t enough research to back up the results to chiropractic care. For almost 130 years patients have been finding relief and benefit from getting adjusted at their chiropractor’s office. Now in the past 10-15 years we are finally seeing the researchers doing studies on how and why chiropractic helps, as well as patient satisfaction, safety and efficacy of chiropractic care.
A Randomized Controlled Trial of Exercise and Manipulative Therapy for Cervicogenic Headache (Jull, Spine Volume 27) gives us some insight into how effective manipulation and exercises are for treatment. What does that mean? A cervicogenic headache is a headache that originates in the neck and travels up into the base of the skull and possibly to the temples, eyes or just occipital region. Basically it’s a classic tension stress type headache.
The study showed patient found benefit with manipulation (chiropractic adjustments either manual or instrument) and home exercises that focus on muscle control not strength. So the good news is you can do all of this at home, or even your desk at work and not have to go to the gym.
Since you’re already here there are neck exercises on my website. They focus on range of motion and stretching the muscles that tighten and cause subluxations and compression on nerve roots that end up causing neck pain and headaches.
Rather than suffer or take all those meds give chiropractic a try.