The term cervicogenic headache means “headache originating from the neck”. While headache is one of the most common disorders from which people suffer, a greater number of them are being found to be caused by disorders of the neck and upper spine. The neck, or cervical spine, is also one of the most overlooked areas as a causative factor in headaches.

Nerves exit the spinal cord at each spinal level, and pass over and between the joints and muscles of the spine. In the lower neck, these nerves exit and supply the sensation and muscle strength to the arms. Often when one of these nerves is irritated or pinched, the individual experiences pain and tingling in the arm. These same spinal nerves from the upper three spinal levels of the neck go over the skull and provide most of the sensation to the back and sides of the head, and to the forehead over the eyes. These nerves can be irritated by the same joint and muscle problems that, in the lower neck, cause pain and tingling in the arms. When the upper nerves are irritated, headache radiating from the back of the skull to the temple or over and behind the eyes may result.

The most appropriate treatment for this type of headache is chiropractic manipulation. A large study of this treatment for cervicogenic headache was done by researchers at Maribor General Hospital in Yugoslavia. A group of 100 patients with these headaches were treated with spinal manipulation. Within three weeks of treatment, 75% had a good reduction in the headaches. When questioned after one year, 25% had been permanently cured, and 65% had maintained a good improvement in the number and severity of the headaches. These exceptional results when it is considered that most of these patients had had years of other unsuccessful medical treatments.

The more that is learned about headache, the more apparent two facts become. The first is that many headaches are caused by nerve irritation in the upper neck, and the second is that chiropractic manipulation is the best treatment for this common problem.

Almost all adults over the age of forty years will show some evidence of disc degeneration on x-rays. However, the great majority will not have back pain or, if they do, it will come and go. This should suggest that, although the degenerated disc may be a contributing factor in their pain, it is not the entire problem. Many persons who have been told from spinal x-rays that they have degenerated discs in their backs may have needlessly accepted the suffering without exploring all treatment avenues which might possibly help.

With age, almost all discs will degenerate. However, from a variety of factors such as previous injury, genetics, and other as yet unknown factors, some discs begin to degenerate at an early age. Many adults will have a single disc in their lower back begin to "thin" by age 35 to 40 years.

The spinal discs are the soft cartilage pads that occupy the space between the vertebra or spinal bones. It is the disc that is capable of compressing and bending allowing the joints of the spine to move. Without discs, the spine would be a rigid column of bone unable to bend. When a disc begins to degenerate, it allows the joint to move improperly causing pinching of one part of the joint. The term used for this painful joint pinching is "impingement". As impingement is the source of the pain, not the disc degeneration itself, treatment which corrects impingement will often totally relieve the pain associated with disc degeneration.

Chiropractic manipulation has proven to be a good method of correction of the impingement associated with disc degeneration. In a large study of chronic back pain patients at the Department of Orthopedics at University Hospital, Saskatchewan, Canada, researchers found that chiropractic manipulation was effective in relieving back pain in over 80%. Many patients had disc degeneration causing joint impingement and yet still had good results with chiropractic manipulation.

Anyone who has been condemned to a life of back pain because of disc degeneration should consider chiropractic treatment. It will offer relief to many sufferers.

Facet syndrome is the term used for perhaps the single most common cause of low back pain. Doctors at the University Hospital in Saskatchewan, Canada studying almost 1300 cases of low back pain found that this disorder occurred more frequently in their patients than any other diagnosis. In a similar study, researchers at West Virginia University Medical Center reported in 1987 that the failure to diagnose facet syndrome was the single most common cause of unsuccessful back surgery. In this study, 69% of those who had had unsuccessful back surgery proved to have undiagnosed facet syndrome.

Facet syndrome originates from pain stimulus from the small joints, the back portion of the spinal vertebra, the portion called the “facet”. These joints involve an overlapping piece of bone from two adjoining vertebra that glide over each other during movement of the back.

Degeneration of the cartilage surface between the two bones can cause them to bind during movement causing back pain and often pain down the back of the leg. Many persons with facet syndrome will prove not to have any cartilage degeneration in the joint but will have pain caused by stiffening of the joint which causes to pinch during certain movements.

The most successful treatment for facet syndrome is chiropractic manipulation. In the study at University Hospital in Canada, a group of 18 patients with facet syndrome were treated with chiropractic manipulation. Of these, 88% were reported having a good or excellent result with treatment. This is a high treatment response rate for any group of back pain patients.

Perhaps the first consideration in the diagnosis of back pain should be that of facet syndrome. If this diagnosis is overlooked, needless suffering may occur. Through a thorough chiropractic evaluation, facet syndrome can be diagnosed and proper treatment begun. Often those with back and leg pain can find relief of their symptoms when previous treatment has not helped.

Migraine headaches are one of the most common neurological disorders affecting approximately 15% of the population, or about 45 million Americans. It is a problem for which few people have found a “cure”, and many have accepted as something with which they will have to live. This, however, may not be necessary.

Although all of the factors causing migraine have not been discovered, one common cause is now better understood. Increasing evidence is showing that in susceptible individuals, nerves from the upper spine can be irritated by poor joint movement in the neck. These nerves connect to the trigeminal nucleus, a relay center for many of the nerves going to the head, and particularly its blood vessels. Dr. Michael Anthony, an Australian medical neurologist, states that this nerve irritation in the neck should be corrected before any drug therapy is tried.

Chiropractic manipulation has long proven to be one of the most effective treatments for migraine. The most complete research study to date was funded by the Australian government and performed in 1976 by a combined team of medical and chiropractic researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia. This study found chiropractic treatment to provide more relief and more permanent cures for migraine than any other treatment tested. In a similar study in Canada in 1987, Dr. Howard Vernon, a prominent chiropractic researcher, reported similar results. Migraine subjects had, on an average, grater than 30% reduction in the frequency and duration of headaches and a 55% increase in activities that had previously been restricted by the headaches.

Chiropractic treatment will bring relief for many patients needlessly suffering from migraine headaches. It does not have to be a problem that “you just have to live with”.

Few disorders of the spine rival the frequency of low back pain. One such disorder however, is neck pain. Just as low back pain often is accompanied by numbness or tingling in one or both legs, neck pain is often accompanied by these sensations in the arm. While many persons attribute these sensations to "circulation", they most often result from pinching or irritation of a spinal nerve.

Several causes of numbness and tingling to the arms originate in the neck. Perhaps the most common is restriction of movement of a spinal joint. This may cause direct friction to the nerve root as it exits the spine, or secondary muscle tightness which can also produce nerve friction. Factors such as degeneration or thinning of the spinal discs, narrow the nerve openings in the spine and predispose to nerve irritation. Those with disc thinning or degeneration however, respond to treatment well if normal joint movement can be restored with manipulation.

Dr. J.K. Paterson, a medical doctor from Great Britain, performed a large study on patients with spinal pain syndromes. Of the 364 patients studied with cervical spine or neck disorders, 115 reported numbness, tingling or pain to one or both arms. A complete relief of symptoms was obtained in 90% of the patients with neck disorders using chiropractic manipulation. Interestingly, although Dr. Paterson had a high rate of success with pain disorders in the lower spine, the success rate for neck pain and numbness to the arms was even higher. This group of patients seems ideally suited to chiropractic manipulation.

Numbness or tingling to one or both arms is usually the result of a pinched or irritated nerve in the neck. Examination will reveal the cause and ruled out "poor circulation". Chiropractic treatment is most often successful in resolving this condition and should be considered in anyone with these symptoms.

A Common Cause Of Back, Hip and Leg Pain

The term SACROILIAC JOINT may be unfamiliar to you. Past generations often used the term to describe how their back went “out”, saying that they “threw their sacroiliac out”. What is the sacroiliac joint? How does it cause back pain? If this is the cause of your back pain, can it be fixed?

The sacroiliac joint is actually a 2 joint structure located at the bottom of your spine. The sacroiliac joints are formed when the sacrum and the two pelvic bones come together. The joints are held in place by a series of ligaments that cross the bone surfaces.

For many years, medical researchers felt that the sacroiliac joints don’t move. However, through advanced imaging technologies, it has been proven that the sacroiliac joints do rock back and forth in a rhythmic motion called “NUTATION”.

This normal motion can be disturbed when the sacroiliac joints mis-align and get stuck in the wrong position. This is what “old timers” referred to as “throwing out their sacroiliac joint”.

What causes the sacroiliac joints to mis-align? Many things can, but there are certain common causes:

1. During and after pregnancy, a woman’s pelvis goes through dramatic changes that can result in permanent misalignment, and pain.

2. Taking unusually long rides in the car, or long airplane flights can cause the sacroiliac joints to be unnaturally compressed. This can also happen to people who drive to work every day, or sit all day.

3. Improper lifting.

What type of back pain does a mis-aligned sacroiliac joint cause? Often, the pain is below waist level, on one side or the other, on or near the bony points just above the buttocks. In addition, pain can radiate into the hip, buttock, and thigh area, but generally not below the knee.

Can chiropractic treatments help correct a mis-aligned sacroiliac joint? Actually, chiropractic care is the treatment of choice for a sacroiliac joint syndrome. No other treatment can restore the normal alignment and position of the sacroiliac joint like skillfully applied spinal manipulation. Most patients experience steady improvement of their symptoms after treatment starts, which generally continues over a 4-6 week period of time too ensure long term correction of the alignment and movement problems associated with sacroiliac joint syndrome.

If you have been diagnosed with sacroiliac joint syndrome, take heart, it is a well known, common cause of low back pain and related symptoms that responds well to chiropractic treatment.

Sciatica can be a severely painful condition. It is caused by inflammation of the sciatic nerve, a nerve which runs from the lower back through the hip and down the leg. The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the body, as anyone who has had sciatica can attest. The most common cause of sciatica is pinching or irritation of the nerve in the lower spine. Slipping of a disc, slight displacement of a spinal joint, bones spurs or combination of all of these problems are the typical causes of sciatica nerve irritation.

Sciatica is one of the most common conditions for which back surgery is recommended. Back surgery however, is only successful about 60% of the time and has fairly high risk of complications. More recent interest in non-surgical treatments for sciatic nerve pain has caused several researchers to look at chiropractic manipulation as an alternative. Researchers at St. Thomas Hospital in London recently reported the results of their study of non-surgical treatments for back and sciatic nerve pain in the British Journal Of Rheumatology. Comparing traction, spinal injections and manipulation, they found manipulation to be the single most effective treatment in the 513 patients studied.

In a similar study, researchers at the California College of Medicine at the University of California Irvine, also found manipulation to significantly improve clinical signs of sciatic nerve compression. Clearly, chiropractic manipulation is one of the most effective conservative treatments in those with sciatic nerve pain.

Chiropractic manipulation should be on the first considerations in those with sciatica. It can prevent the need for spinal surgery in many patients. There are effective ways of dealing with pain in the body's largest nerve!

Shoulder pain is quite common in all adults after the age of thirty years. In shoulders which have taken a lot of abuse from repetitive use or injury such as in athletics, it can occur at an earlier age. As the shoulder is the most mobile joint in the body, it takes a lot of abuse and strain. Although direct injury to the shoulder certainly can cause chronic pain, joint dysfunction in the neck is a contributing factor in many cases. Several important muscles in the shoulder also connect to the neck. Irritation in the neck can cause these muscles to tighten and affect movement of the shoulder joint.

The relationship between the shoulder and the neck is more complex than simply that of some muscles attaching to the both areas tightening and affecting the movement of both. The single most important muscles group responsible for smooth, pain-free movement of the shoulder is called the rotator cuff group. All of the muscles of the rotator cuff are run by a nerve which originates from the middle of the neck. In essence, proper movement of the shoulder is dependent upon normal nerve innervations or "signals" from the neck. Irritation of this nerve can disturb the function of the rotator cuff muscles allowing injury and strain to the shoulder.

Because of this relationship between the neck or cervical spine and the shoulder, chiropractic treatment has commonly been helpful to many suffering with shoulder pain. This treatment not only directly treats the shoulder pain but also works on the origin of the problem which is often poor joint movement in the neck. This is obvious in many who have not had relief of their shoulder pain even with injections of the shoulder for "bursitis" only to have their pain quickly resolve with chiropractic treatment. The management of shoulder pain is not complete until chiropractic treatment has been tried. It will often bring lasting relief to many who have had repeated shoulder pain.

Whiplash injury is a common problem in our modern society, and unfortunately, one that often results in chronic pain and suffering. As we become more urbanized, packing greater numbers of people into smaller areas, and as the number of cars per household increases, whiplash injuries will continue to become more frequent.

Standard treatment recommendations include pain medication, a neck collar and rest. However, with this typical treatment program, many patients continue to suffer. Adequate treatment methods for these injuries have lagged behind the great increases in their occurrence.

Chiropractic, in contrast to most other treatments, has done well over the years treating whiplash injuries, helping prevent many injuries from becoming chronic, and helping to reduce pain and suffering in many that have become chronic. Because of this record of success with the treatment of whiplash injuries, researchers have begun to study chiropractic treatment methods.

Recently a group of medical researchers from Dublin, Ireland compared a treatment approach similar to that used by chiropractors with that of medication and rest. Sixty-one patients seen at the emergency room for whiplash injury were divided into two groups to receive these two different treatments.

The group receiving manipulation had greater reduction of pain and return of movement than did the group treated with medication, rest and neck collars. These results led the researchers to conclude that whiplash is better treated with early active treatment like chiropractic.

Many people suffering from whiplash injury could avoid prolonged or permanent pain and suffering by receiving chiropractic care.

During the course of your treatments, you may receive various types of muscle therapy designed to treat a muscular source of pain…commonly referred to as a “trigger point”. Is this a muscle spasm?? Not really. A trigger point is actually a small, often centrally located knot in a muscle that becomes a source of pain by itself. It is not a true muscle spasm because the entire muscle is not involved, only a small, specific portion of it. A trigger point has also been referred to as “primary muscular dysfunction”, and as such requires specific therapy to fix…either by hand or machine (ultrasound and electrical muscle stimulation).

In addition to your adjustments, the doctor may perform various types of trigger point therapy designed to alleviate these sources of pain.