Headache

What is a Headache?

A headache is when you experience pain and discomfort in the head or face. The location, intensity and frequency of the pain can vary greatly. Different types of headaches include: migraine, cervicogenic headache and tension type headache.

Causes/Etiology

Headache pain results from nerve signals interacting among your brain, blood vessels and surrounding muscles. These nerves send pain signals to your brain, causing a headache.

Anyone can experience a headache. Migraines occur in both children and adults but affect adult women three times more often than men.

Symptoms

There are many symptom types, common symptoms may include:

• pain on both sides of your head and feels dull or tight
• pain throbbing on one side of your head
• sensitivity to light and sound

Management

Physical therapy is essential in management of certain types of headaches including:

• Manual therapy is helpful in stretching the stiff cervical joints and relieving muscle tension which can desensitise nerves that causes headaches
• Exercise prescription to strengthen and stretch muscles along the neck and shoulders can help relieve headache symptoms
• Posture correction can help decrease cervical muscle and joint tension and therefore alleviate headaches