How to Relieve a Headache Without Medication: An Upper Cervical Chiropractor’s Guide for Busy Women
I get it, we’ve all been there, you’re looking for how to relieve a headache without medication and I can help you. You have a long week at work ahead of you, you’re juggling multiple commitments this week, and suddenly, out of nowhere, you wake up on Monday morning and there is that all too familiar headache. Whether it’s a dull, tension headache or the sharp intensity of a migraine, headaches can quickly derail your day and even your week. If you’re a woman between 30-45, managing the stress of your career, family, and personal life, headaches can seem like an unfortunate, regular occurrence.
But what if I told you there’s a way to relieve your headache without reaching for that bottle of over-the-counter painkillers or your rescue medications and even prevent them from happening? As an upper cervical chiropractic doctor, I’ve seen countless patients—just like you—experience lasting relief from their headaches through natural, non-invasive methods. I am also one of you, I haven’t just helped patients with this, I am one of the patients as well! Let’s dive into how you can finally get rid of that headache without medication and begin to reduce your frequency of headaches overall.
Understanding the Root Causes of Your Headache
Before we dive into how to relieve headaches, it’s important to understand why they happen in the first place. As a woman in your 30s or 40s, you’re likely juggling multiple responsibilities: your career, family, social life—and all of these can contribute to the load on your body that may lead to headaches or migraines. Migraines are a sensory processing disorder. Numerous risk factors or “triggers” may result in a migraine-eliciting environment. It’s typically not one thing, but multiple things eliciting that perfect environment for a migraine. Here are some of the biggest players in creating this perfect storm environment.
Hormonal Changes
For many women, headaches are closely tied to hormonal fluctuations. Whether it’s due to your menstrual cycle, pregnancy, or even the early stages of menopause, dysfunctional hormones can cause multiple issues throughout your body and can be linked to headaches. Start to make note, “am I getting headaches when I ovulate?” “Am I getting headaches around when I get my cycle?”
Stress
Stress from work, relationships, or home life can lead to frequent headaches. It’s not that stress itself is bad, it’s not. What matters is if your body is able to process, adapt, and respond to these stressors. It may be emotional stress, environmental stress, physical stress, dietary stress, or toxic load stress on your body. If there is not proper processing and adaptation to these stressors, they begin to add up. Picture a glass of water full to the brim. Adding more water at this point is not beneficial, it has nowhere to go except to overflow and now creates a mess.
Neck Dysfunction
This is one that typically most our patients are shocked to hear. They had never considered the neck could be a large player in headaches and migraines! Have you played sports growing up? Been in any car accidents? Hit your head multiple times? Had any of those America’s funniest video incidents? Your neck likely has dysfunction. Migraines and headaches often have a structural component and somewhere along the way the head and neck had an injury that your body has not properly recovered from. This leads to layers of biomechanical dysfunction in the head and neck which ends up being a large player in that perfect storm for migraines. This is where we come in with upper cervical chiropractic.
How Upper Cervical Chiropractic Can Help Relieve Headaches Naturally
So, how does upper cervical chiropractic care help with headaches? Let me explain.
What is Upper Cervical Chiropractic?
Upper cervical chiropractic care focuses on the very top part of your neck where your head and neck meet, this is called the Craniocervical Junction (CCJ). Misalignments in this area can interfere with your nervous system, which regulates the functions of your body—including pain signals. When there is an alignment issue in this area, this can lead to overall dysfunction, leading to problems in range of motion, sensory processing of your head and neck, and controlling crisp movement in this area as well. With all of this dysfunctional information from this area leading back into your brain, this is where heightened pain signals can come in from poor information constantly flooding your brain and overwhelming your system.
By gently realigning the top two bones of your neck, upper cervical chiropractic care helps restore proper communication between your brain and body. This often leads to a load being taken off the body and a reduction in headache frequency and intensity.
The Connection Between Neck Misalignments and Headaches and Migraines
As I work with patients, I frequently see that CCJ misalignments are a common culprit in causing headaches. In fact, many of our patients find that their headaches start to dissipate after just a few gentle adjustments and there is a large change in overall frequency and intensity.
Why is this? As we mentioned above, when there is dysfunction in the CCJ from an alignment issue, this leads to poor information constantly flooding the brain, which can lead to heightened pain signals. This area of the spine is rich in neurological tissues, blood flow into and out of the brain, CSF flow, and sensory information from muscles and ligaments as well. So, when there is bad information flooding the brain from this area, the brain thinks this is a threat to its survival. All these mixed signals can lead to migraines or headaches. Once the headache comes on, it is the brain’s way of saying there is something wrong and it needs to be fixed.
Natural Ways to Relieve a Headache Without Medication
As mentioned earlier, upper cervical chiropractic care can address the root cause of many headaches and migraines by correcting misalignments in your upper neck, the CCJ. Even if you’re not experiencing a full-blown migraine, a misalignment in the neck can still trigger many different kinds of headaches. A proper adjustment to this area can help release tension and improve the flow of blood and sensory information to the brain, which reduces pain and reduces that migraine eliciting environment.
The best part? Adjustments are gentle and non-invasive, with no twisting, popping, or cracking. There’s no need for harsh medications or treatments. The results speak for themselves—many of my patients experience relief and begin to get their lives back. As we mentioned earlier, this also functions as a preventative, working to reduce migraines and headaches in the future from restoring function to this highly important CCJ.
When to Seek Professional Help
If you’ve tried all the traditional methods for headache relief and still experience frequent or severe headaches, it may be time for a different approach, especially if you have had head or neck trauma in the past and regularly have associated neck pain with your headaches and migraines. The neck is often the most overlooked aspect of headaches and may be why you have only received limited relief, if any at all. If you change all the different aspects of your life and triggers but never address the neck’s component to your headaches and migraines, you will likely continue to suffer until that root is addressed.
As upper cervical chiropractors, we focus primarily on assessing the CCJ. In our office, we use a comprehensive neck health assessment that assesses your neck’s functioning and if there is any dysfunction. You can learn more about that here: Neck Health Assessment. After a detailed exam, case history, and neck health assessment, we use a 3D CBCT scan of your head and neck to evaluate what those misalignments may look like and to rule out any other pathological involvement, and from there, we use this scan that is specific to your body to address these misalignments and work on a customized treatment plan to alleviate your headaches and migraines and get your life back.
Conclusion: Find Relief from Headaches Without Medication
Relieving headaches doesn’t have to mean reaching for painkillers every time. By addressing the root causes—whether it’s a misalignment in your neck, stress, or dysfunctional hormones—you can find long lasting relief without medication. As a chiropractor, I’ve seen the incredible results that upper cervical chiropractic care can provide to women like you who are ready to take control of their health.
If you’re tired of relying on medication for your headaches, it might be time to explore natural, holistic options. Book an appointment with our office today and let’s work together to help you find a headache-free life.
Remember: Your health and wellness are worth it!