Have you ever wondered about treating your headache and neck pain? Well, chiropractic management of headache and neck pain is something that we specalize in. These two conditions usually co exist, and are common patient complaints. Let’s go through the process of how we will treat you when you come into the office for chiropractic management of headache and neck pain.
We always begin with a past history. This includes asking questions about the following:
1) prior injuries or accidents,
2) family history, social history (including education level and occupation, sleep habits, tobacco/alcohol use, and more),
3) allergy history,
4) vaccination history,
5) current medication use to identify potential side effects,
6) review of your systems (cardiovascular, respiratory, ears/nose/throat, genito-urinary, and more).
Then we dive into onset, palliative, and provoking positions/activities/situations, quality of symptoms, radiation and location of complaints, severity of complaints (pain—right now, on average, at best and at worst), and timing (better in the morning or night, work-relatedness, hormonal shifts, or patterns).
Up next coms an examination. This could include: taking vitals, observation of posture, gait, movement, affect, facial grimace, palpation of muscles, trigger points, joint noise (crepitation), warmth, orthopedic tests that provoke an increase and/or decrease in pain/symptoms, neurological tests, and consideration for special tests like x-ray, blood tests, or specialty evaluation.
All of the above information will help us to come up with a diagnosis and treatment plan to treat your headache and neck pain. Let’s take a look at some common treatments:
Manual therapies like spinal manipulation (thrust and non-thrust types); mobilization (stretch-type); “drop table” methods; manual traction, trigger point, and other “soft-tissue” techniques; and modalities such as vibration, ice/heat, electric stim, ultrasound, and more.
So are you still wondering about your headache and neck pain? Come see us and receive chiropractic management for your headache and neck pain.
