I am going to lay out the 5 underlying causes of over 90% of chronic headaches.
These are the same 5 things that we have integrated into a proprietary diagnostic and treatment program and has made our Institute a leader in functional headache treatment. Interested in seeing how we can help? Take our migraine quiz to see if you’d be a good candidate for our program.
Introducing The 5 Hidden Causes Of Chronic Headaches
Factor 1: Neuro-Inflammation
Neuro-inflammation means that your brain is literally inflamed. We read a lot in the mainstream media about inflammation and it’s link to various chronic diseases. Brain inflammation get’s a lot less attention, is much more serious, and can be extremely difficult to calm down without performing the right kinds of tests.
It’s like a low-grade fire burning in your brain that is extremely hard to put out once it starts burning. It would be like having a fire burning only on the top floor of a 100 story building with no staircase and a broken elevator. We have had to develop a series of functional tests and treatments to deal with this often ignored yet serious cause of chronic headaches.
Factor 2: Immune Food Sensitivities
Most headache sufferers unknowingly suffer with immune food sensitivities that greatly contribute to a chain of events that trigger chronic headaches.
An immune sensitivity is when the immune system abnormally reacts to proteins in various foods and vigorously attacks them like it would do to a bacteria or parasite.
Day in and day out the food you eat can be the very cause of your unrelenting headaches.
The kicker, and the thing that confuses doctors and patients alike, is that in most cases there are zero stomach or GI symptoms (nausea, gas, bloating, diarrhea, etc).
Finding, correcting, and fixing the damage caused by this inflammation process in your gut, is a linchpin in our Migraine Treatment approach.
Factor 3: Hormonal Imbalances
More and more doctors recognize the link between hormone imbalances and headaches. The bad thing is once recognized as a hormonal imbalance, almost universally, doctors skip the most crucial step.
They don’t stop to ask the question why did the hormones become imbalanced and then figure that out, BEFORE they arbitrarily begin putting women on hormone creams, birth control pills, or hormone injections.
Our program acknowledges that presence of vast and intricate hormone interactions with many different body systems involved. It is through this paradigm of diagnosis and treatment we can deal with the root of the hormone imbalance and actually restore normal function and in the process help our patients overcome even the most serious headaches.
Factor 4: Brain Gut Connection
We have a vast network of blood vessels in our head, gut and brain. When these vessels expand and contract quickly it triggers a massive pounding headache.
You may have heard the term “vascular” headache but probably have never read much about what causes these to happen.
These blood vessels do not behave like a simple piece of tubing. They are lined with muscles that allow them to get bigger and smaller to change how much blood moves through them at any given time. These muscles are controlled by different parts of our brain.
Many chronic headache suffers have functional weaknesses in the parts of the brain that control these blood vessels. This loss of functional control leads to a never ending barrage of headaches.
When this happens patients are given a virtual life sentence of headaches because medicine doesn’t have an answer to this.
Why?
Well let me ask you a question. If you have a weak muscle in your arm or leg what medicine would the doctor prescribe to make the muscle stronger?
There is no medicine to make your weakened leg muscle become stronger. That would take rehabilitation and exercise.
The same is true for a functional brain weakness. It requires a very precise functional neurological examination followed with a customized set of brain activities and exercises that will strengthen that very part of the brain that is allowing your blood vessels in your brain to expand and contract abnormally.
Factor 5: Cervicogenic Headaches
Cervicogenic headaches are headaches that originate from structural and nerve deformities/entrapments in your neck. Your neck serves as part of the structural protection for your spinal cord. Through various micro and macro traumas that occur throughout a lifetime, starting as early as the birthing process all the way through car accidents and sports trauma, we can structurally alter the way the neck functions and moves. This can result in chronic headaches.
It’s similar to having a car slightly out of alignment. Slowly this will cause the tires to wear out unevenly. You can keep replacing the tires at an accelerated rate or you can simply fix the misalignment and your tires last much longer.
When the neck bones and muscles get functionally misaligned they cause the network of nerves that travel to the back of the head to get distorted which will eventually lead to chronic headaches that can only truly be addressed by fixing and correcting the underlying structural issues.
It Takes A Whole Person Functional Approach
After reading this it should be glaringly obvious that you have not even began to address the true issues that are likely causing your chronic headaches. There is not a pill in the world that will ever solve these underlying issues. That is why headaches become chronic in the first place … the cause is never uncovered.
The only sound approach is to thoroughly investigate these sources and then functionally correct the problem … this is exactly what our proprietary system is all about.
We want to serve patients on the highest level. We want our patients to emerge from our program free of headaches, free of the pills and potions that lead to further problems, and have a new headache-free outlook on life.
It is our mission and we are accomplishing it … one migraine and headache sufferer at a time.
We realize that our approach bucks the system.
Others don’t like the fact that we are finding ways around the limitations of our broken healthcare system and are providing the type of life changing outcomes that all doctors initially embarked on their careers to provide.
Take the first step to being pain free!
Return to the migraine headache overview page, or read about the latest research and developments related to migraine headaches.
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