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NECK PAIN and HEADACHENECK PAINNeck pain and headache can floor the toughest of human beings. Oddly, it's at the extremities of the body where pain is felt with the greatest intensity - the feet, the hands and the neck and head. Those parts of us that are most vitally in contact with the environment have the most sensory receptors. "The most significant input into the Central Nervous System with regard to balance, posture and movement comes from the mechano-receptors of the cervical spine."
- Guyton (the most revered textbook of Medical Physiology.)
Thus it comes as no surprise that the noci-ceptors in these self-same structures can and do bring on a flood, even in the toughest and most rugged individuals. We just feel the pain in the neck more intensely. It's rare that even the worst sore back will drive a person to tears. But the neck! A really painful neck can humble any one of us. Whereas one can usually find respite from a very sore back in certain positions, from the painful neck there is no escape. It hurts! The reason? The head and neck, hands and feet are full of nerves finding their way from a million nociceptors in the muscles, bones, joints, ligaments and fascia sending information to the brain, reminding the Central Nervous System when all is not well in the state of Denmark. Hamlet, I believe. HEADACHESome 80% of headaches originate in the structures of the neck. It can be muscular, or from a neck joint, a whiplash perhaps, some structure that fires these noxious impulses into the spinal cord. Interestingly only a small proportion of them are referred to the brain, but enough when it's coming from the neck to cause a blinding headache. The rest fire into the autonomic system, stimulating the sympathetics, adversely affecting general health.A week never passes when I don't have a new patient in the clinic who is taking 15 or more pills per week for neck pain and headache that they have been suffering from for years. The effect on the kidneys is devastating. The Kidney Foundation's Transplant Games are a stark reminder to us of the danger of chronic analgestic medication. Most of these athletes lost their kidneys through painkillers. Chiropractic has a quite different opinion to medicine. We say treat the cause. If a bone in the neck is fractured or the ligaments torn in a whiplash, put the neck in a collar. If a muscle is tight, stretch it. If a joint is fixated, adjust it. These treatments have no side-effects, or very few. And if anyone tries to convince you that Chiropractic is dangerous, just ask why their insurance premiums are a tenth of the those of their medical colleagues. Medicine says kill the pain, take these analgesics, or deal with the inflammation, take these anti-inflammatories. Did you know that 14 000 people a year actually die in the USA from a bleeding ulcer caused by NSAIDs? And that doesn't include those who have a heart attack, another side effect. Little wonder their malpractice premiums are so high!
The jaw joint or TMJ (tempero-mandibular-joint) is another frequent cause of headaches sometimes accompanied by facial pain. If you enjoy reading then this short story from Frog in my Throat will interest you. FROG IN MY THROATAn embarrassing puncture while riding his 'dream machine' to work brings Bernard Preston into contact with a patient suffering from neck pain and headache who declined Preston's 'expensive' chiropractic treatment. Instead, he opted for his doctor's anti-inflammatories. Enjoy! And think twice before taking NSAIDs for more than a week or two for neck pain and headache. If at all. Rather treat the cause of the pain.Can you believe it? Brought up in a Chiropractic family, I don't believe I have ever, not even once, taken NSAIDs. Not that I haven't had pain! Even chiropractors can have their dramas.
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