In the 25 years I have worked as a Remedial Massage Therapist and the 8 that I’ve practiced Acupuncture “Why does my head ache? Why won’t my head stop hurting? and Can you help my head stop hurting” are the 3 most often asked questions in my clinic. In fact, trying to help people who have aching heads has pushed me toward continuing education like no other question.
Heads, necks and jaws are what my skill set serves the best because I spent so very much time finding ways to help the people who trust me to help.
My “skull set” my son calls it with a giggle.🤭
Head pain is irritating, and irritable making, eff off-world! Might as well add isolating not that you care that no one likes you when your head hurts.
Also, defeating, making you feel helpless, how will I live like this forever?
On top of the reality that you have a mind-numbing headache that pretty much excludes light from your life, the pain of it is activating your stress response, good ol’ Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis (HPA) sending all kinds of SAVE YOURSELF hormones, jacking up all the systems that you need to prevent you from having your head bitten clear off your shoulders by a lion. Not that you’d care, your head hurts that bad.
You know you’re in trouble when you’re fantasizing about large predators with sharp teeth….
Joking aside, pain in general really does suck, but relentless head pain creates another level of suffering for the people that live with it. Headaches can dominate your awareness like nothing else and not knowing the answer to the why does my head hurt question can make it emotionally unsettling.
Have you seen your doc?
That needs to be top of the list. Especially if the pain blurs your vision, affects your hearing and balance or keeps you from sleeping at night. Get yourself seen asap. High blood pressure can cause headaches, thyroid dysfunction (any hormone imbalance), medications, and all circumstances that bloodwork can assess.
MRI, and a cat scan, are wonderful tools for checking the inside of your head and spine, helpful for easing the fear of the unknown.
BEEN THere Done that? Head still hurting?
Headache cause listicle:
- Old whiplash injuries
- Falls and weak postural muscles
- Neck and jaw tension-sitting idly on your arse-icle will get you, sitting is the new smoking in case you missed the memo
- Screen strain
- Dehydration-don’t like drinking water? Let’s talk about juicy food
- Menstrual issues
- Atmospheric pressure
- Fluorescent lights
- Nasty boss/whining children, sometimes joyful children as well
- Changes in season…….
….and the list can go on until it gives you an even bigger headache.
Having long ago surpassed Malcolm Gladwell’s definition of the time it takes to become an expert I can say with a fair amount of conviction that what my hands help me perceive when I touch where people tell me they hurt is often a lack of flow, be it blood, lymph, oxygen, electricity or cerebral spinal fluid.
Your body is meant to be fluid, from your cardiovascular system to your lymphatic fluid, your bladder, your sinuses, and your sexual organs, your brain actually has pools in it that generate and reabsorb cerebral spinal fluid (a deLIGHTful juice that helps nerves conduct impulses super fast).
Massage is incredibly helpful for increasing blood and lymphatic fluid flow but what about the times that your head hurts more when someone is moving you around, as is often the case with migraines, what then? How do we circulate fluid without vigorous touch?
Enter Cranial Sacral Therapy a gentle, and occasionally still a hands-on form of touch designed to support the flow of fluid within the brain and spinal column.
I am trained to do internal mouth-based CST that I often follow with facial acupuncture or acutacks and this is how my clients discovered that the skin on their faces looks a bit different after 3-5 sessions. I do this for sinus pain as well.
I have no formal training in techniques aimed directly at skin health, a side effect of increased fluid flowing due to CST and acupuncture. Occasionally people also tell me they feel as though they can see better, of course, this is subjective reporting but it makes sense that relaxing the musculature around the eyes would help them move more freely, so maybe they aren’t “seeing” better but their eyes don’t feel restricted by pain so they experience a “perspectual” shift.
Acupuncture and cupping increase blood flow, no understanding of the intricate patterns of chi flow is required.
Sarah’s story
Sarah, a 43-year old teacher, and mother with 2 children ages 10 and 12 was referred by a colleague of mine after she had run the gamut of diagnostics and conventional medical interventions. She was suffering, in her words “my head hardly ever stops hurting and it’s sucking the love out of my life, my family is hurting with me, they need me to be better, I fall asleep with my head hurting and wake up to it hurting, it sucks to be me”.
She also said the pain medication she’d been given made her brain feel sluggish and not good at her job. Her doctor suggested a pharmaceutical called Gabapentin that she would take every day but she felt nervous about a permanent medication and felt she wanted to try something else first.
She’d changed as much as she could on the listicle, exercise, posture, screen filters, drinking water, eating melons, and still her head felt …” like it needs to pop like a pimple”, she said that often exercise made it worse, especially the forward bends in the yoga class that she had enjoyed before her head started to hurt almost daily.
I asked her if her headaches felt related to her menstrual cycle and she said she didn’t notice any difference and that tracking them was pointless because her head hurt more than not.
I asked would her children and husband be willing able to spend 1-2 hours with her and me, to learn some simple hands-on pain management techniques?
She said yes without pause.
We then worked out a treatment plan that included five 75-minute appointments in a 6-week period. We would use a combination of guided breathwork and relaxation with a massage, CST, and acupuncture.
We booked her family training session between appointments 2 and 3.
She told me at her 4th appointment that she had gone 7 full days without her head hurting.
At her 5th appointment, she told me that about 3 days prior her head had started to hurt riding home on the bus with her class after a field trip. When she arrived home her daughter and husband took 5-minute turns providing 20 minutes of the gentle traction technique I had taught her family.
This eased the hurt considerably, she used the progressive muscle relaxation and breath meditation I had made for her before bed and woke up in the morning without a headache.
At our 4-week follow up she told me she could do yoga without getting a headache. On the 2 afternoons in the previous 2 weeks that she had gotten a headache her daughter and husband with their 20-minute rotation calmed it enough for her to sleep it off.
She also told me that the gentle techniques I had shared were used regularly by her family, especially the ones for screen fatigue.
You can link to them here Handy Hacks for Brain Fog
I referred her to a full-body deep tissue Massage Therapist that she loves and the last time I saw her she told me her head pain barely warrants an honourable mention, her biggest trigger is sustained loud noise in small spaces but she can manage that.
Sarah’s story is one of many and I really can’t say for sure if it was my hands or the hands of her family that made the difference. Either way, her life is a place she wants to live again and that’s what counts.
I call them Handy Hacks and here’s a link to one for Brain Fog.
I also have an All things Head, Neck and Jaw FB group for information and connecting to others that get it, it’s private but the pain is the only entry requirement, yours or someone you love.
My clients have told me for decades that the only thing worse than being in pain is feeling alone while in pain.
I will leave you with a quote from Margaret Atwood….
Touch comes before sight, and before speech, it is the first language and the last and it always tells the truth.
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