Headaches
Headache Treatment at Holistic Health & Chiropractic of Frankfort
Suffering from Headaches?
Do you, or someone you know in or around Frankfort, IL, suffer from headaches?
1 out of 6 Americans suffer from headaches, and over 8 million people a year ago go to their primary doctor complaining of headaches. Would you believe me if I told you that for the most part headaches cause unnecessary suffering?
You’re probably saying “But doc, I have headaches that everyone else has. Aren’t they common?”
While headaches may be common, they’re not normal. You may be thinking that you don’t have a headache that often. I might agree with you if you had a headache maybe once maybe twice a year.
If you’re having just two headaches a week, do you realize that’s over 100 headaches a year?
That is NOT normal. That is your body’s way of giving you an alarm that something is wrong and needs to be corrected.
If you’re taking medication on a regular basis, think about the potential side effects and adverse reactions that medication could be causing to your health, such as developing secondary health problems.
Here’s another question: how are your headaches affecting your life beyond the pain they cause? I’ve had patients tell me their jobs are on the line because their work performance is poor, or that their relationships at home are an absolute mess. There have even been patients who have told me: “doc, the headaches are so bad. I just want to take a bottle of pills and end it all.”
My name is Dr. Jon Heyer. I am a Holistic Chiropractor, Acupuncturist, and Nutritionist. At my Frankfort, IL, office, Holistic Health and Chiropractic of Frankfort, we use a three-prong, holistic approach to help people suffering from headaches.
There are three sides to a person’s health.
Chiropractic
Research is showing that 60 to 70 percent of all headaches have a cervicogenic origin.
That’s frontal headaches, sinus headaches, occipital headaches, migraines, and even cluster headaches. All major types of headaches originate in the neck.
Maybe that sounds frustrating to you because you’ve gone to your medical doctor and not gotten satisfactory answers about what’s causing your headaches, or even worse, fewer solutions.
Maybe your doctor did an x-ray, CT, or MRI of your head. I’m not telling you he did anything wrong, I’m just saying he may have missed the spot by a couple of inches and needed to look below your head into your neck.
The vertebrae in your neck should have normal range of motion. They should be able to bend left, right, forward, backward, rotate, and have good play in between the joints. Unfortunately, some people have vertebrae or joints that are stuck are fixed in place. We chiropractors call this a subluxation.
Subluxations can cause nerve interference, which in turn causes pain. To remedy this problem, we make specific corrections to restore the proper spinal alignment, which removes any nerve interference the subluxation was causing. This allows the body to heal itself.
There may be some people who have been to chiropractors before and not gotten the relief they are looking for. Not all chiropractors do things the same way and no two are exactly alike. Many times, the source of a problem is more complex than just the neck and we need to look at the patient’s whole posture.
Proper Posture
In this picture, you’ll see three upside-down triangles. The big one at the bottom represents the pelvis, the foundation of the spine. The second triangle in the middle is the trunk of the body, and the third is the head sitting on the neck. You’ll see the jaw as a right-side-up triangle and swings like a pendulum. When everything is properly aligned, then the body is balanced. Imbalances in any of these places will create distortions in the posture and spine that manifest pain in the head, neck, and jaw. So often postural subluxations are overlooked, but when corrected, the problem resolves.
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is excellent for helping address tension and migraine headaches which are the two most common types of headaches, but how does it work?
Somewhere behind a wall are wires, going from the light switch to the light in the room. You can’t see the wires and you can’t see the electricity flowing through the wires, but you can see the result: the light that illuminates the room. Your brain and nervous system are very similar to this. Your brain is like a giant battery which sends electric signals through the nerves to the rest of the body. If you want to do a bicep curl to lift a weight or wiggle your fingers to play the piano, your brain sends an electric signal down a nerve to the muscles to coordinate movement in your arm or hand.
Your nerves function like wires for your body. Even though you can’t see your own nerves or the wires in the wall, you know they are there because you can see the end result. An electrician can tell you if a wire is hot and live by using a voltmeter. If there is an electric current running through a wire, there is a magnetic field around that wire.
When it comes to your nerves, we have many names for this magnetic field. Some call it an aura, a meridian, a channel, or what have you. It doesn’t matter what you call it, the important part is that there is a flow of energy through the body that brings balance and homeostasis to the whole. If there is a blockage, excess, or any kind of interference in that distribution of energy, symptoms can manifest and in many cases these symptoms are headaches.
We use a type of acupuncture called electro-acupuncture to rebalance any disturbances or interferences in your system to restore homeostasis. Put another way, your cell phone works best on a full charge compared to when the battery is almost dead. So too does your body. We charge up your system to function better.
Nutrition
There can be many causes and contributing factors from a nutritional perspective that can cause headaches. Food can be a cause. I know what you are saying: “but doc, I had a food allergy test and they found nothing.” Ok, but did they do a food sensitivity test? Do you know the difference? Probably not, but most doctors don’t either.
Did they test your mineral and vitamin levels? “But doc, what’s that got to do with headaches?” Many cases of headache sufferers have a deficiency in magnesium. But how would you know if you weren’t properly tested?
Would you believe that gut issues, digestive issues, and microbiome imbalances could be the primary problem with headaches as a secondary symptom, but the one that screams the loudest?
Maybe you feel like you’ve tried everything. Maybe you have, at least everything that contemporary medicine considers. Yet, you have no answers, and worse, still have headaches.
That’s why we need to look at your nutrition from a functional perspective. When we consider your health from a Holistic approach, we can help end your headaches for good.
Contact Our Chiropractor in Frankfort, IL, Today
If you’re tired of dealing with headaches every day, our Holistic chiropractor, Dr. Jon Heyer, can help you achieve relief. Schedule your appointment today by calling us at (815) 469-7472.