Cervicogenic Headache
Have you ever had a headache after you’ve been sitting at a desk for extended periods? Maybe it happened after you were surfing all weekend? Or maybe it’s when you turn to check your blind spot in the car? Sometimes it’s a weirdly intense headache that comes on with a change in activity. And despite you or your loved one’s assumptions, your lack of water consumption isn’t always to blame. Sometimes the culprit is actually the neck and surrounding musculature, in what is known as cervicogenic headache (CGH). The weird thing is that people don’t always report neck pain, but rather a tight or vague feeling of soreness. The reason why the pain is referred to your head is not completely understood. The main hypothesis is that the nerves which provide the brain with sensory information from the neck have the same message interpretation centre in the brain as the nerves which supply the same information for the head (trigeminocervical nucleus). When the message gets sent to this centre for interpretation, the message gets a little bit confused, and your brain interprets the message incorrectly. Subsequently, the painful sensation is referred to your head (cool right?). It really shows just how interconnected our body is and the difficult time our brain has in deciphering and interpreting sensory information, including pain.
In CGH, the pain is often located on one side of the head around the eye/forehead (or both sides, with one being more intense), which is exacerbated by neck movement and prolonged postures. The quality of the headache is described as moderate to severe in intensity and can last anywhere from hours to weeks. You can imagine how debilitating this can be, making it difficult for people to concentrate let alone attend work, University or school. The good thing about it is that physiotherapy is the mainstay for treatment and can have reasonably quick and long-lasting effects. There are a whole range of factors which can contribute to the headache, including; dysfunction in upper cervical joints, trigger points in shoulder/neck muscles, trauma, whiplash, weakness in neck flexors, reduced activity of endurance muscles of neck etc (it’s a long list).
Smartmoves physiotherapists are experienced in treating cervicogenic headache and know how to diagnose and recognise contributing factors to your headache. We employ a range of techniques to help address your immediate pain/discomfort as well as exercises and self-management strategies to help get the headache away and keep it away. If you have a headache that seems to fit with this pattern, then give us a call so we can assess whether it’s cervicogenic and give you the tools to move towards a headache free existence!
