How to Help a Headache 3 Things you can do TODAY! Learn THREE lesser known (yet often very effective) things you can do TODAY to address the source of your pain -- not just the symptoms
1 | Carolina Head & Spine Clinic of Chiropractic
919-246-9497 migrainehelpdurham.com
If you’re reading this, you probably deal with regular HEAD PAIN, even MIGRAINES, or know someone who does…
THE PROBLEM It’s one of the most frustrating problems people suffer from. Here’s why… Imagine you’re startled awake by the shrill alarm of your smoke detector. A wire to a lamp in your living room has shorted, and your smoldering carpet has burst into flames. You dial 911; Help is on the way! The Heroes arrive and race into your home carrying… fans. Moving room-to-room, they work to blow the thick smoke away. Pleased with their success, the firefighters pack up their fans and head back outside to their trucks. All the while, the wire is left unattended to, and your carpet continues to burn. Soon enough smoke gathers against your ceiling… and you again call 911. This is how most people deal with head pain. Whether it’s a mild tension headache or a severe migraine, the truth is that treatments most often just “blow smoke”. Eventually pain “gathers” again. Why? Because you have not addressed the source of your pain.
Carolina Head & Spine Clinic of Chiropractic | 2
HOW NOT TO SOLVE IT It doesn’t matter how much symptom relief you use: NONE are effective at putting out the fire. This is why head pain is so frustrating. “It is Neither LOGICAL nor SCIENTIFICALLY VALID to leave the cause of a problem unaddressed, relieving symptoms only, and calling that treatment a Success”. While there are many causes of head pain, be assured that it’s NOT from a deficiency of Advil, Sumatriptan, or other drug in your daily diet.
THE FIRST SET OF REAL SOLUTIONS In this guide, I could have included any of the following in the “3 Things”… what you might call “the usual suspects.” You have surely read or heard about these before… So if you haven’t already addressed these in your quest to break your cycle of recurring pain, then do so:
DRINK ENOUGH WATER
GET ENOUGH SLEEP
STOP DRINKING ALL SODA
REDUCE YOUR STRESS
EXERCISE REGULARLY
GO GLUTEN FREE
3 | Carolina Head & Spine Clinic of Chiropractic
STEP
1
WHEN THE TREATMENT IS THE PROBLEM G44.40…That is the diagnostic code that doctors use for a common cause of frequent headache known as: “Analgesic Overuse Headache” or “Medicine-Induced Headache”. The first rule to getting yourself out of a hole: STOP DIGGING! Michael was a patient who suffered daily headaches. So following the usual course of treatment, he took a popular over-the-counter pain killer daily. The relief was temporary (at best) and before long the head pain would return. Little did Michael know that his choice of “treatment” had become the source of his perpetual head pain. Many people are unaware that taking any kind of pain medicine… aspirin, ibuprofen, anything prescription strength, etc as little as even 2x per week may be enough to produce a rebound effect that CAUSES the pain to keep returning(!) Michael chose to break the cycle. Rather than wean himself slowly away from his daily intake, he took a faster (but harsher) route and decided to stop the pain medication “cold turkey”. “The next two days were hellacious”, he reported, as his body went through the predictable symptoms of withdrawal and detox… But then…The cycle was broken. And his daily head pain ceased.
Carolina Head & Spine Clinic of Chiropractic | 4
STEP REDUCE THE INFLAMMATION Your head pain is very Rarely a “head” problem. Read that again. The smoke (from the fire, from the bad wire) gathered against the ceiling is not a ceiling problem. One step you can take to dampen the fire is to reduce inflammation often present in the tissues of the neck…especially at the base of the head. Ice is your friend. If you have a soft-gel filled ice pack (as pictured below) in your freezer, then Bravo! If you don’t (yet) a bag of frozen vegetables or hash browns will work just fine. Try this: Take a dish or hand towel, lay it flat, and place the cold pack on one end. Next roll the towel from the other end so that when you are finished, you’ll have a rolled towel with just one layer of cloth covering the cold pack. Lie on your back and place the rolled ice pack under your neck with the ends going from ear to ear. * NOTE: If lying in this position is uncomfortable or makes you feel dizzy, then stop. As long as this is not uncomfortable, keep the cold pack against your neck/ base of your head for up to 20 minutes per hour, repeating as often as necessary. Doing so often reduces or relieves head pain, as you will be getting closer to its source.
5 | Carolina Head & Spine Clinic of Chiropractic
2
STEP
3
GET YOUR “WIRES” CHECKED Reading the story about the house fire, how absurd would it be for firemen to arrive, blow the smoke around, and declare it a success? But THIS is why most headache treatments have failed to give you significant, lasting results. Addressing your persistent pain requires more of you (and frankly, more of your Doctor). The question to answer should NOT be, “how can we relieve your pain?” It MUST be, “what is the actual, physical problem causing your pain to occur in the first place?”
And then, “…how can we address/correct
THAT?” A chemical (pill or injection) cannot and WILL NOT fix a physical problem… it’s only a fan blowing smoke. In most cases, the pain you feel is your body operating the way it is designed… it’s getting your attention telling you something is wrong… and telling you to “do something about it”. You just need to do the right something. The reason for your recurring pain most often goes beyond “stress”, “barometric pressure”, or “it runs in my family”. It’s most often the shorting wire causing the fire that needs to be found and “fixed”.
ROOT CAUSES {NEUROLOGY NERD TIME } So where does head pain come from? If you couldn’t care less about the “Why?” and just want to know, “What do I do next?” then skip to the next page to the section titled, “A Step you can take”.
Carolina Head & Spine Clinic of Chiropractic | 6
A BRIEF LESSON IN NEUROLOGY:
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THIS?
The “shorting wire” in the house fire analogy
You’ve probably heard that in the early stages of a
represents a nerve that is being irritated.
heart attack, a person might feel pain in their left arm.
What
specifically happens is beyond the scope of this report. For our purposes here, understand that nerve irritation is a common origin of symptoms such as pain. Your
Yet there is nothing wrong with their arm. Before reaching the brain, nerves from the heart cross talk with nerves coming from your arm… and the brain is often fooled and mistakenly “thinks” the arm is the
nerves
act
like
telephone
lines
carrying
information between your brain and your body. If a nerve is irritated, it’s causes something like static on the phone line – the communication traveling through the nerve becomes distorted… Like driving through a bad cell signal area. The result is distorted output (often felt as pain). There are multiple pathways by which irritated nerves lead to headache or migraine, which might be felt “anywhere” in the head.
Here’s one of the most
Question: Would taking pain medications for arm pain be a wise approach to treating this condition? This is Key to understanding how to effectively treat headaches and migraines, especially those felt in the temple, side of head, eye, sinus, or even face and jaw.
A STEP YOU CAN TAKE Get your wires checked. Assessing the nerves to see if they’re the cause of your headaches takes a specific
common: Your “Trigeminal” nerve has three branches… one to your jaw, one to your nose/sinus, the third to your
level of understanding of this phenomenon. And it’s an area that most doctors frankly lack knowledge. My name is Dr. James Saeli. At my clinic, Carolina Head
temple/eye area. Before reaching your brain, this nerve runs through a “communication-sharing” center (a nucleus) with nerves from your neck.
problem…
This means information
coming from each one overlaps. This cross talk of communication is the reason why you
& Spine, headaches are our main focus. It’s something we help people overcome on a daily basis. We’ve helped literally HUNDREDS of chronic headache and migraine patients. All WITHOUT the use of Medications.
may feel pain in your head, yet there is nothing wrong
Allow us to help you see if YOUR pain is from the same
with your head.
source. If it is, NO amount of medication will fix it.
The brain mistakenly feels it’s your head calling out for
When the status quo isn’t working, taking a different
help.
path is necessary to move you from “frustrated” to “back in CONTROL”.
7 | Carolina Head & Spine Clinic of Chiropractic
– 3 STEPS TO YOUR –
TRANSFORMATION
01
Call today & request a FREE Consultation
02
Meet with the doctor to assess & establish health goals
03
Receive customized Health Action Plan that fits you
OUR PROMISE TO YOU • Not only LISTEN, but we will HEAR your frustrations
• Discuss every step of care, provided in a safe,
regarding your health
peaceful and productive environment
• Do everything we can to find the root of the problem • Communicate and educate you on the issues you are dealing with
care you need is affordable • Do everything we can to restore your life to one
• Accept you as a patient only if we believe we can help you
• Work with your budget to make sure getting the
of health and vibrancy • Help stop the medical world merry-go-round
TRANSFORMATION STORY “Conventional medications either made me sick or provided no appreciable benefit. The relief that Dr. Saeli conveyed to me was exceptional. The severity of the headaches lessened and the tightness in the shoulder muscles was substantially reduced after the first few visits. The headaches became less frequent and finally went away altogether.” - Robert F.
CALL TODAY AND SCHEDULE YOUR FREE CONSULTATION. 919-246-9497.
Carolina Head & Spine Clinic of Chiropractic 14 Consultant Place, Ste 250 | Durham, NC 27707 Phone: (919) 246-9497 | migrainehelpdurham.com