Headache Treatment Newport Beach

Headaches are not one condition. The ones that respond to what we do are the ones that start in the neck — tension-type and cervicogenic headaches — and telling them apart from migraine matters, because the treatment is entirely different.

What Headache Treatment Newport Beach can address

A cervicogenic headache usually sits on one side, starts at the base of the skull and spreads forward, and can be provoked by holding the neck in a position or by pressing particular spots. There is often reduced neck rotation to the same side. Where the examination reproduces your headache, we have something to work with.

What treatment involves

Restoring movement in the upper cervical segments, working the muscles at the base of the skull and across the shoulders, and dealing with the mid-back, since a rigid thoracic spine forces the neck to compensate. Headache Treatment Newport Beach patients get here also covers the desk and sleep positions that keep provoking it.

The types we cannot help

Migraine is a neurological condition, not a mechanical one. Some people with migraine have a neck component that is worth treating alongside their medical management, but we are not going to present chiropractic as a migraine treatment. Cluster headache likewise belongs with a neurologist.

When a headache is an emergency

A sudden severe headache unlike any you have had, a headache with fever and a stiff neck, one following a head injury, or one with new neurological symptoms — go to an emergency department, not to us. We ask about all of these on the first visit.

What to track

Frequency and duration are better measures than intensity, because intensity is remembered badly. A headache diary for a fortnight tells us more than any single description, and often reveals a trigger nobody had connected.