My head still hurts (part 2)

The last headache article was devoted almost entirely to migraines.  There are many other types of headaches that can affect the average person.  Most of the headaches that the average person suffers from are not of the severe classification.  Migraines only occur in 12%of the population and are more common in women, cluster headaches occur in even fewer (0.5-3%) and are more common in men.  Migraine and cluster headaches are typically agreed upon as two of the worst kind of headaches but as I stated these are not the headaches that most of us experience. 

The two most common types of headaches are tension and sinus headaches.  Considering that 95% of Americans will suffer from a headache this year and 15% fall in the really bad category, that means that the other 80% of us will typically have one of these two. 

Arguably the more common type of headache is the tension headache.  A tension headache usually starts at the base of your skull in the early afternoon of a particularly bad day.  As the day progresses, or gets worse (depending on your point of view) the pain begins to start migrating up into the temple region.  Eventually the pain feels like a steel headband wrapped all the way around your head.  The severity of the headache can be from a minor annoyance all the way to a near migraine.  The intensity of the headache depends on a few things.  First and foremost it depends on how long you have been suffering from headaches.  The bad thing about headaches, all of them, is that without treatment they typically increase in intensity over time.  The treatment can be by using prescription medication, over the counter medications (non steroidal anti-inflammatory or NSAIDS,) or my personal favorite... Chiropractic.  In most cases the over the counter and prescription medications act as a band-aid or patch to cover up the symptoms and chiropractic works as a cure to get rid of them for good. 

The tension headaches are very common in people that work with computers most of the day and honestly, that is probably about 80% of the population right there.  The reason it is common with computer users is due to our posture while working on computers.  As I mentioned in part one of this article is that when we sit at a desk we need to have our hips back in the chair and our head and shoulders over each other.  The usual computer posture is either a very slouched hip and shoulder position with our head flexed far forward, like this...  or we are sitting with our hips back but leaning forward again with our heads flexed.  Either way our head is positioned was out over our shoulders and causes the muscles at the base of our skulls to spasm and that is what starts the cascade of headache symptoms.

Now since this is usually how we sit at work, and we go to work five days a week and headaches get worse over time you can see how this is a problem.  So rather than take a few pills every day to make the headaches go away doesn't it make sense to change your work posture and have your neck examined chiropractically to see if we can stop your headaches all together?  I hope you would think the latter makes more sense. 

Next week I will spend some more time talking about headaches specifically sinus headaches.  Enjoy your weekend and remember to stretch whenever you are raking leaves!!