As with many other pathologies, there are different types of headaches. The one we will focus on today is “cervicogenic headaches” and neck pain. There are unique symptoms that arise with cervicogenic headaches, including:
(Gallagher, 2007)
In future posts, we will touch more on the different types of headaches and how each of them can affect you!
Treatment of the neck can help with headaches and decrease the frequency and severity of symptoms of headache. This includes common treatment procedures such as massage, strengthening of associated muscles and stretching of involved muscles (Gallagher, 2007).
The combination of manual therapy (e.g. massage, trigger point release etc.) and exercise has proven an effective treatment for neck pain compared to many other alternative treatment types (Miller et al., 2010). The combination of these treatments is important, as mobilisation and manipulation only provides short-term relief. Exercise appears to have the added benefit of improving pain and function over long term (Miller et al., 2010). Therefore, the combination of both treatments can combine pain reduction with long-term changes (Miller et al., 2010). The exact type of manual therapy and manipulative treatments is still speculative and varies according to individual practitioners. Similarly, exercise therapy requires further research and the exact type of strengthening is difficult to determine.
Learning new behaviours associated with common tasks, such as sitting down and looking down to read a book or read your phone for long periods of time can also assist with treating your neck pain. As prolonged postures in a specific posture can increase neck pain frequency, and subsequently induce more headaches (Gallagher, 2007).
Posture… Is really not that important. Now before you explode with utter outrage on the blasphemous nature of this statement, hear me out! There seems to be a lack of high quality evidence on the relationship between posture and pain (Mahmoud et al., 2019; Slater et al., 2019). However, what we do seem to know is that prolonged time in one particular posture is detrimental and can lead to increased pain and discomfort (Mahmoud et al., 2019; Slater et al., 2019).
Instead, what we should be focused on is regular postural adjustments. As discussed in my shoulder pain blog post, small postural adjustments in sitting, especially while doing desk work can provide many benefits to your pain and discomfort.
To reiterate the previous point, prolonged postures or positioning in one specific posture can be detrimental and lead to increased pain and discomfort. Therefore, to counteract this, regular movement is encouraged of the neck and shoulders. One particularly important structure that requires movement is the shoulder blade, and ensuring adequate movement of your shoulder blade during various movements.
A particular muscle is of interest when interpreting the link between neck pain and scapula function. This muscle is called the “Levator Scapulae.” This muscle originates from the transverse processes of C1-4 (your upper cervical spine), and attaches to the superior-medial border (top-middle) of the shoulder blade. Its role in shoulder function is the elevation and downward rotation of the shoulder blade.
