Headaches can quickly ruin a good day. Change your mood and make it so you feel like your brain isn’t functioning as well as it should.
Neck pain isn’t much better. Yet unfortuantely, they can both hit at the same time.
At Rapid Recovery, we typically get fantastic results helping people with headaches or neck pain. In fact many people entering the clinic with a headache, often leave with out one.
Tight muscles through the upper back, neck and even head play a huge role in headaches. These also can cause tightness or restriction through the neck. Sometimes this neck pain even occurs without the headache being present.
How Massage is Used Treat Headaches
Our treatment focuses on releasing these tight muscles. Many people will feel immediate relief. Many people enjoy the feeling of the treatment, describing these areas being worked on as a relieving pain.
We expect after your session that you will have greater range of motion through your neck, be in less pain. Ultimately me expect that you will be a much happeier person.
Following your treatment, the therapist will often give you some take home exercises and advice. This will maximise the benefits of the treatment, and make these benefits last longer.
Future treatment is the guided by Rapid Recovery’s pain free pathway. A pathway that we’ve developed to get you out of pain and keep you that way.
In summary, massage is a fantastic tool for the use of headaches. In fact it’s one of the most common issues we help people with every day.
More info on the services that we provide that makes a massive positive change in most headache cases can be found here:
If you have any questions please feel free to give us a call. We understand that sometimes you are uncertain about what form of therapy will be best for you. Alternatively, if you are ready to book now use the button below & book online.
Here Are Some Common Headache Questions.
Pain Killers & Headaches – How often is too often?
To quote Headache Australia directly “In general too often is more than 2-3 days per week.” Why?
Anything over this can set off what is known as medication overuse headaches – basically an extra type of headache that develops from using acute pain medication too often (you don’t even have to be using it for a headache!).
How do you avoid this? Address the cause of the headache. For the majority of people this can be as easy as a few massage treatments combined with some specific exercises!
Tension Headaches… could this be you?
Tension headaches often feel like a diffuse ache through all or part of your head – it can affect the front, the sides, back or just feel like it’s everywhere. Often this is a vice like feeling.
We find that people with tension headaches will have limitations in their neck movements caused by the tight muscles which are also causing the headaches.
With a tension headache most of the pain you feel in your head is referred from muscles in your upper shoulder and neck. This also irritates nerves running into your head which cause a tightening of muscles through the head – this means you now have referred pain into your head as well as the feeling of tightness around your skull (this can also cause pain).
Massage helps to relieve the tight muscles in your upper back, top of the shoulder, neck and over your head to relieve this tightness. For many clients the headache will dissipate quickly.
We then set about making this a long term change to stop this headache coming back. We do this through some follow up treatment as well as advising of any lifestyle changes and giving you specific exercises to help.
Why Is Remedial Massage So Effective For Tension Headaches?
Tension headaches are those head throbbing, rub your temple type headaches that almost everyone experiences at some point. They are generally caused by muscles in the neck and shoulders contracting to the point of being unable to release naturally which then creates trigger point (knots). But, this has a knock-on effect as the muscles tighten other muscles compensate which exacerbates the issue.
Remedial massage will assist the release of hypertonic (tight) muscles that would otherwise, stay in a contracted state. Using muscular stripping, stretching, reactivating and trigger point therapy techniques muscles are able to be eased back to their natural state, decreasing tension though the neck/ head – reducing your head ache!
Do You Want To Use Remedial Massage to Manage Your Headaches and Migraines?
Headaches and migraines are either partly or solely caused by physical issues within in the muscular system. Most likely by trigger points (knots) within the muscle tissue. These knots will send referral pains widening the area of pain felt.
Massage uses several techniques to decrease or eliminate the symptoms of headaches and migraines.
Trigger point release is one of the most effective ways to treat headaches as most headaches, if not caused by muscles, have muscles react to the compensating changes. As the muscles are manually released of tension, they will restore normal movement through joints and eliminate the referred pain – leaving you headache free!
Why We Don’t We Just Treat Your Neck and Head for Headaches?
Many clients that come in wonder why we treat such a large area if your only concern is a headache. If you have ever spoken to a massage therapist, you have probably heard them say “it’s all connected”.
Headaches do not just sit within the temporal area wanting for someone to release the tension in the one muscle (yes, there is a muscle over your temple). There are many, many muscles that cover the space of your head and neck, which can all cause headaches.
Often, pain associated with headaches will cover the upper back and shoulder area as well. This is due to the two most common factors for headaches – poor posture or postural adaptations to stress affecting this area as well. This is why treatment often incorporates the back and shoulders.
Also, the neck is a major cause of headaches. This is the top part of the spine. If there are any issues through the upper spine, treating only the neck will not relieve your headache or migraine symptoms.
This type of approach is extremely effective for headaches!
How Does Massage Help Migraine Suffers?
Many describe migraine’s as torturous… but what about the headache after the migraine has passed?
For many people after the intense pain caused by a migraine they are left with a much duller headache. This is a transformed headache… very similar to a tension headache, and can be treated in much the same way.
It’s also very common for people who suffer migraines, to suffer from tension headaches in-between their migraines.
I know from the results we get with our migraine clients (working on 4 key muscles) that we can make a huge reduction in these transformed & tension headaches. Most clients have also noticed a decrease in the severity and frequency of their migraines when we have done this!
At Rapid Recovery Clinic we’ve put together this article as a way to give back to our industry. For clients, potential clients, GP’s & other allied health professionals to gain a better understanding of how massage, myotherapy & remedial massage can help headaches.
Everything in this article is the views of the author and what they have found to be the case in their clinical practice. This information is intended only as a guide. Even so, It is up to you to seek your own independent medical advice for your individual circumstances & neck pain and/ or headaches.