Can Physical Therapy Fix Migraines?

Did you know?  Tension-type headaches are the most common form of headache that most people experience, however most people with this form of headache do not need specialized treatment.  In a 2004 study in the medical journal "Headache" (Tepper et al. 2004), a total of 128 medical clinics across 15 countries were studied and out of 1203 patients presenting with a complaint of headaches, by strict criteria, 94% were found to have variants of migraine or "probable" migraine.  

Migraine is far more common than many people think and most people seeking medical care for headache will fall into this category.  In 2007, 1.5-7% of visits to a primary care physician in North America were to address headaches (Hasse et al. 2002).  At the age of 40, one report noted 70-80% of females and 60% of males report experiencing headaches in the US (Scher et al. 1999), and a lifetime prevalence is noted between 83-93% (Boardman et al. 2003).  These reports show that most of us will experience headaches at one point in our lives.  There any many misconceptions about headache.  We can demystify those for you and provide you with an integrated treatment plan that considers physical, environmental, nutritional, mental and emotional factors that could be contributing to your headaches and teach you how to take better control of the parts of your nervous system that are involved in the headaches that you experience.