Headaches: The Culprit & the Solution

Headache patients are some of my favorite patients.  I take great pride in what I'm able to do for them.  I've taken a girl who had migraines every day for the previous 5 months and gotten her to be headache-free for a full month-- no drugs needed!  I recently took another young girl who had a concussion from a year ago, causing her headaches every day for that entire year.  Within the course of a weekend we reset some biomechanics so that she went a full week with no headache!  You might be asking, "Why only a week?"  Answer:  this happened exactly 1 week ago!  We are yet to see how long this girl's symptom-free time will last.  We are anticipating and shooting for the rest of her life!  There's many other examples of patients for whom I've seen these types of results transpire.

So how do I do it?  What is the culprit behind headaches?  Well, we need to establish and acknowledge that headaches can and do take on many forms.  So to state that there's a magic bullet answer is too simplistic.  However, in my experience, very often the answer lies in the S.O.T. muscles, in one way or another.  SOT stands for the sub-occipital triangle.  These 4 pairs of muscles are designed to only be fine-tuning muscles.  In other words, as we sit up straight, the SOT's are able to do best work in this realm. 

However, (wait, Dr. Kelby, are we getting into posture again??  You'd better believe it!!), when we don't hold adequate posture, the SOT's have to become pseudo-major moving muscles (coarse-tuning).  

Some old fashioned radios utilized both coarse tuning and fine tuning.  Our SOT muscles are only supposed to be used for fine-tuning of our posture, but more often than not, we are using them for coarse-tuning.

These SOT muscles were never intended to do that!  And here's the killer:  the SOT's are the most highly innervated muscles of our musculoskeletal system!  Meaning, as they become aggravated (by our bad posture), it's very easy for them to send pain signals to your brain, and to radiate that pain through the adjacent areas/muscles of your head!  This results in headaches; ouch!

My solution involves 3 or 4 modalities that will take those headaches go away, usually getting results within the first treatment!

• First, some myofascial release on those SOT muscles, as well as some adjacent neck muscles.  Myofascial release is not just massage work.  It's much more aggressive, and I seek to strip out all the built up garbage within those muscles.  Sound painful?  That's because it is!  But it works, so I do it!  And my hands have become very skilled at it.
• Second is the indispensable chiropractic adjustment!!!  The adequate range of motion that your spine once had needs to be restored.  If you don't use it, you lose it.  And most of us aren't active enough to keep our joints dynamic.  And when you allow your spine to be chronically stuck, that area can no longer afferently stimulate your brain.  If it sounds complicated, just know that you become less able to function, generally, and the chiropractic adjustment is very often the solution.
• Third is some very specialized exercises that pertain to preventing future headaches.  I will be posting how to do these exercises in a future post.  Stay tuned; like and follow the blog to keep informed!
• Fourth, if necessary, I use some specialized resonating tools/equipment that I came across with the brilliant physical therapist, Sharik Peck.  This, too, will have to be detailed in another post.

These tactics will take away your headaches without the straining side-effects on your digestive organs that come from headache pills.  Plus, we will prevent most future headaches from coming on.

I often come across people with headaches.  Can you imagine why?  Posture (surprise, surprise); people have sucky posture!  And I'm going to keep blogging about it until you all get the message!  This is why I'm so concerned with locating and helping people who work at a desk-- poor posture is inherent in how they spend all their time!  Not to mention the time away from work where they're also on a computer, their phone, or whatever the case may be.

Now, of course there are those who suffer from migraine and cluster headaches, which come on due to a variety of stimuli, such as seasonal allergies, smells, lighting, etc.  So I'm not blaming every headache or migraine on posture alone.  However, I will submit to you that those who are more prone to those types of headaches would very likely experience less of them if their posture was improved.

So here's some questions to consider:

• How many headaches do you have each month?  How about each week?
• How many headaches are too many?

I'll make this statement:  One headache is too many.  It is an indication that something in your body is amiss.  So let's fix it!  Remember that we need to get to the root of the problem, and not just treat/trim the symptom branches.  Getting to the root of the problem tells me that you're truly valuing your health, instead of just pushing it aside because you're "too busy" to deal with it right now.

Get Moving!  Get Performing!


Contact info:

Dr. Kelby Martin
(929) 33-KELBY   [929-335-3529]

South Jordan Chiropractic
10456 S Redwood Road
South Jordan, UT 84095
Office phone:  (801) 446-5100