Headache/Migraine Treatment

Body In Mind Physio offers specialised services for headaches and migraines. Patients experiencing headaches, migraines, sinus-like feelings, or facial symptoms are encouraged to seek our care. 

Did you know, a big referrer of head/facial pain and migraines is the cervical spine (the neck). Often the patients we see have been through multiple referrals to specialists and doctors for scans and tests that come back clear. If red flags have been ruled out, and nothing has been found, it often can be stiffness at certain levels in your upper neck that refers pain and symptoms up into your head. At Body In Mind Physio, we assess and treat these levels of your neck and if change in your headache/migraine presentation is seen then we have likely identified a driving cause of your symptoms. Once identified, treating the neck through manual therapy (hands on treatment) and through exercises to strengthen and achieve more range of motion can lead to less frequent, less intense and shorter duration headaches and migraines. 

Your experience within your first session should include:

1. A comprehensive subjective history, in other words, a good chat about your history with this issue. When it started, what makes it worse, what relieves it, what does the problem stop or limit you from doing, who you have seen in the past and what effect it had, etc. We will also ask some questions to rule in or out red flags and once ruled out, we will proceed with the assessment of your neck.

2. An assessment of your neck range of motion, strength and function. We will also look at how your shoulder, shoulder blade and thoracic spine (mid-back) moves to see if any stiffness or weakness in these areas are contributing to the problem.

3. Treatment - a combination of manual therapy (hands on treatment) and exercise prescription to dial into the assessed root causes of the issue. We often use sustained hands on pressure to joints in the neck. These joints are usually the culprits for the referred pain into the head so if we can get them to move more, then symptom relief usually follows suit.

4. Constant rechecking of baselines - when treating, we will constantly go back to some movements or your pain and see if the treatment option just provided has changed anything. If we get change from a treatment option, we are beginning to form a picture of which potential areas are driving the pain.

5. Home exercises to go home with - we will send you home with 1-2 exercises that relates to moving, treating, strengthening an area that we found success in changing your pain/symptoms. If we can relate that exercise to symptoms changes, it can be a powerful tool to use in between your treatment sessions to have more control over the pain/symptoms.

Following your first session, each subsequent session we will really dial into whether the combination of the treatment and your home exercises have contributed to less frequent, less intense and shorter duration headaches/migraines. If this is the case, further reduction is expected. If change is not occurring we may refer you back to your GP, refer onto a neurologist or pain specialist to ensure you are in a more appropriate pathway.