Throbbing pain on one side of the head. Sensitivity to light. Numbness and tingling. Visual disturbances. Those who suffer from migraines are often sidelined from their everyday tasks due to the severity of their symptoms. Every day at Knewtson Health Group we see patients seeking relief from their migraine pain.
How Does Chiropractic Help?
While medication can treat migraine symptoms, it doesn’t get to the root. Aligning the spine improves spinal function and relieves stress on the nervous system. Chiropractic care allows the body to function optimally and reduces the risk of stress and tension building until headache pain develops.
How Soon Will I Get Relief?
Sometimes when a person is in the middle of a migraine, an adjustment can make it worse before it gets better, but then it can make it go away quicker. So getting adjusted in the middle of a migraine may not be comfortable for people.
However, we do have many patients who opt to get adjusted while having a migraine, because they know it will help the migraine go away faster. It depends on the person. Sometimes people come in with migraines, and they get adjusted and feel great within a couple hours.
Keep Your ‘Bucket’ From Overflowing
We like to use the bucket analogy at our practice. If we can keep your “bucket” from overflowing, you’re unlikely to get a migraine. So let’s say you aren’t sleeping well, and your bucket gets filled up halfway, and then you’re stressed out, and that fills it up a little bit more.
And then you indulge in some chocolate or drink that glass of wine or whatever it is that is your “trigger” and your bucket overflows. Getting adjusted can help reduce stress and help you sleep better. But a chiropractic adjustment can keep everything loose in the neck to prevent your bucket from overflowing and then getting a migraine.
Other Approaches
As we’re a multidisciplinary practice, we can also provide nutrition guidance and recommend certain supplements to help prevent migraines.
Sometimes we also recommend that patients ice the front of the neck, because that’s where the carotid arteries are, and those arteries send blood to our brain. Why icing? If you’re icing the neck, you’re constricting those arteries ever so slightly, which will send that cooler blood flow to the brain. That action will constrict the arteries and the brain ever so slightly. Applying ice can significantly help with the throbbing you get with a migraine.