25 Feb 2016

Headaches Helped by Osteopathy

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Many people think that osteopathy is focused on the treatment of back aches. Whilst perhaps most of the patients seen at northlondonosteopaths.co.uk do in fact suffer from back related problems, we explain that any problem arising from an imbalance in the musculoskeletal system may potentially be helped by osteopathic treatment.  Included in the list would be the common headache, depending on what was causing this miserable pain. Tension in the neck and shoulder muscles could be the culprit. Other mechanical causes include facet joints of the neck and upper back locking up, hypertonic tight muscles, poor posture whilst sitting or even unbalanced muscle pull. Sometimes generalized stress or tension can cause pressure to build up and result in quite intense pain in the front or back of the head.

A recent newspaper article described a patient suffering from excruciating headaches and other serious symptoms for over two years, when a referral to a neurologist confirmed the cause as a brain tumour. Alan Nevies and his colleagues and any medical practitioner confronted with patients suffering from headaches and migraines must be alert to certain “red flag” symptoms without being alarmist, as brain tumours are rare. These symptoms include severe headaches often worse in the morning, blurred vision or fleeting loss of vision, seizures or fits, nausea often worse in the morning and drowsiness.  Again, these symptoms are most probably the result of other causes. Whilst it may be prudent to see a neurologist it is important to remember the statistic that one in seven people in the UK suffers from a migraine but one in nine thousand three hundred have headaches caused by a brain tumour.

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