The Vital Element that you Could be Missing on in Treating your Headaches and Migraines

There is often a vital element missed in treatment, which means that you are still a headache/migraine waiting to happen 24/7. When this vital element is missed during the treatment, you often see little to no results happening or you see changes happening for a short period of time but then those changes stop and you go back to the original state of pain. Basically, you are not seeing the changes that you want to happen at all.
 
What is this vital element and what can you do to treat it? That is what Dr. Beth, an Osteopath at Melbourne Headache Solutions, is going to explain.
 
For headache and migraine sufferers, very commonly, we put on medications that we honestly do not have idea what they are doing us. Or alternatively, you are getting manual therapy to your body that makes limited changes. But again, you are not seeing those long term results that you are after.
 
Taking medication may help to relieve the pain but afterwards, it won’t totally go away. Medicines could lead to side effects in your body. So what is this vital element that's missing in treatment that hinders you from getting those long-term results? And what are you missing?
 
There is this thing called brain stem sensitization. What is your brain stem and how does it become sensitized? Your brain stem is a part of your brain and essentially, it's a bit of a relay center for information that's coming up and also originates few things. It houses the origins of your cranial nerves. The cranial nerves have:
 

• Optic nerve that controls your sight
• Spinal accessory nerve that controls the muscles around your traps so it will make your traps and your shoulders really tight.
• Balance center
• Nausea center
• Vomit center

 
When it gets upset you get all the associated features of migraine such as:
 

• Dizziness
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Light, sound, smell sensitivity

Your brainstem is vitally responsible for all those associated features but since it is a bit of a relay center as well, all of the nerves that innervate your face and your head also fit into the brainstem. When it becomes sensitized and sensitized basically just means hyper excitable so it is responsible for the pain you feel in your face in your head of a headache and migraine. That's basically what your brainstem is. If you don't treat this brainstem sensitization, nothing changes.
 
That is the vital element. That is what you have to change to get those long-term results that you are after in regards to your headache and migraine pain.
 
What will happen when you take your headache and migraine medication?  Preventative medications they actually only work on a proportion of that brain stem sensitization because many things happen when your brain stem is sensitized. You get things like:
 

• Pro-inflammatory mediators
• Blood vessels that constrict and dilate

 
Those are the things that medications work on. They work on bits and pieces but they don't work on the sensitization as a whole. They're not getting the whole puzzle. That is the reason why medications work only on some people. And if they do work, it is only through a short period.
 
They stopped working because your body gets used to them. It's not the most effective thing that you can do and they only work temporarily because you need to take these things consistently or only as you have symptoms.
 
Other people get manual therapy for their body. When you opt for this treatment, it is not addressing brainstem sensitization. You are left with this feeling like you are a headache and a migraine waiting to happen 24/7 with both scenarios because nothing is really addressing the underlying cause.
 
What you're going to do about it? How do you take yourself from feeling like a headache and a migraine waiting to happen 24/7, to feeling amazing and normal and doing all the activities that you want to be doing?
 
Well, there is one manual therapy technique that is being researched and designed specifically for headache and migraine sufferers that are being shown to decrease that brain stem sensitization in a natural way through manual therapy. It is called the Watson headache approach. It uses manual therapy to decrease that brain stem sensitization as a whole.
 
It doesn't target individual bits like what medication does. It does that as a whole, meaning that you get the whole thing and it brings you down to a more normal threshold. You’re not that headache and migraine waiting to happen all the time.
 
That is what you are after. You are after the long-term results so you don't constantly feel like on the verge of migraine or a headache because that's no way to live. This therapy is sure to change your life.