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What causes right-sided Headaches?

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 02:49:27 GMT

Do you have pain on the right side of your head?

Behind your right eye?

Throbbing pain in your right temple?

If you get right-sided headaches, then this is the blog for you!

Firstly, the most important thing to consider when suffering with right sided headaches, is that it’s nothing catastrophic – what we would call a ‘red flag’.

Red flags that we look out for include:

It’s a brand-new headache that you have never had before
It’s the worst headache you have ever had
If any neurological symptoms are occurring

Numbness or tingling in your hand or limbs
Speech impairments
Face drooping etc.

If any of these things have started happening, that's never ever happened before, you need to get assessed immediately. We highly suggest going to the hospital or to the doctor and make sure that nothing nasty, like a stroke or tumour or a bleed, or anything like that is happening.

However, if all of that's clear, your MRIs are clear, you've been to the GP, it's been there for a little while and you are still suffering, then we may just have the answer for you!

Generally, what we find is that there's a problem on the right-hand side of your neck. Normally at the OC1 joint or the C23 joint, a little bit lower down. The area of your pain gives us a good idea as to what joint might be the cause of the pain.

The first one, if the pain is right at the very top of the head, it can sometimes go up and behind the ear, around the temple and into the temple - it's more likely to be the OC1 joint at the top of the neck that's causing this type of pain.

Whereas, the C23 joint, refers the pain up and over the head and into the eye, and behind the eye. This is more likely for a right-sided cluster headache, for example, or a right-sided migraine that's just throbbing and thumping on one side of the head.

On occasion, it can be a combination of both joints, OC1 and C23 causing the symptoms to happen.

If you have right-sided headaches and your scans are all clear, then you should consider having your neck assessed. Specifically, the right side of your neck, the OC1 joint, the C23 joint, or the inferior oblique muscle that connects the two.

Hope this information was helpful – if you have any questions, please reach out to us here .

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Is your Headache and Migraine coming from your Neck?

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National Pain Week 2022

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 02:00:00 GMT

The last week of July every year is National Pain Week. It is an initiative of Chronic Pain Australia, who for 20 years have been working to "reduce the unnecessary suffering and isolation caused by Chronic Pain in the Australian Community".

We are extremely passionate about enhancing the community's understanding of headache and pain conditions, and advocating for sufferers - to show them the best ways to manage and treat their conditions. So for National Pain Week 2022, we are sharing with you....

Our Top 5 Tips for Managing Chronic Pain

Tip #1 - Don't Give Up!

Sometimes hearing the words ‘don’t give up’ can be daunting. It’s often so much easier said than done, and for some it can feel like the person saying it doesn’t have any idea what you’re actua lly going through…

Dealing with Chronic Pain is extremely tough, and extremely hard. There is no doubt everyone has good days and bad days. However, from both a mental-health perspective and clinical perspective - it is SO important to not give up! After all, there’s a reason why it’s our number one tip!

Having negative thoughts can be really harmful, and examples of phrases we often hear include:

❌ I am never going to get better

❌ I can’t do this

❌ There’s nothing I can do

❌ I am wasting my time

❌ I am getting worse

Studies have found that having a negative mindset ca n actually make your pain WORSE.

So, one of the best ways to manage your pain in a more controlled and beneficial way is to change these negative thoughts into positive affirmations.

Here are some phrases you should not only tell yourself, but believe within yourself:

✔️ I am strong enough to work through my pain

✔️ My pain does not define me

✔️ I will be patient and kind to myself

✔️ I can get through this

✔️ I am surrounded by people who want to help

It’s also really great to think about how far you have come since you started. What we often find is that patients don’t feel like they have made any progress at all when they’re having a bad day or a flare up. However, it is so important to recognise and compare your growth to when you began, because you’ll soon realise you’ve made incredible changes and progress.

A simple reminder - if you have a bad day, it does not undo all the good days that preceded it.

Engage in positive affirmations, continue to keep going and never give up. ��

Tip #2 - Understand Your Pain

Pain is different for everybody, the way it presents, the way it feels, the severity… no two people share the same experience of pain.

Having a deep understanding of how pain works, and how it relates to you specifically is extremely beneficial in managing your chronic pain.

Firstly, here’s a quick understanding of how pain works….

Pain is an output provided by your brain.

Your brain receives a signal and must make a decision. Is this dangerous or not dangerous? If your brain concludes that, based on the signal and, all the OTHER signals that hit your brain at the same time (ie. visual input, sounds, smells, contexts, memories, feelings), that it’s dangerous - it will give you pain. ��

Your brain is doing this to ‘protect’ you, so that you stop doing what it is, that it’s perceiving as dangerous. For Chronic pain, the reality is that it’s not dangerous…

So, the key during any chronic pain treatment is to realise that improvement comes by gradually challenging your system to "reacclimatise" to a more normal response.

Knowing that the brain does this is crucial in your recovery and rehabilitation of your pain condition!

Secondly, if you don’t have this understanding of pain as explained above, you may start to think, or draw conclusions as what’s causing your pain that isn’t exactly true…

Examples of this include:

�� Thinking your pain is caused by tissue damage, when there isn’t any physical damage

�� Thinking your hormones are causing your headaches, when it could be signals from your neck joints

�� Thinking your disc degeneration is causing your back pain, when it could be dysfunction in your muscles

This can lead to a path of treatment, that’s not treating the actual cause of the pain, and therefore a reason why your pain may be persisting!

Tip #3 - Engage in Exercise

Exercise, exercise, exercise… we wouldn’t be a health professional if we didn’t encourage exercise, right!?

You’re probably sick of hearing it, how important it is and why you should be doing more… But we wouldn’t be saying it if it weren’t true!
This tip is a little different though, we want to encourage you to do some sort of physical exercise that you ENJOY.

Often we hear patients who’ve been to other places, and they’ve left their appointment with a book full of exercises that they’re expected to do. However, if the expectations of the physio and realities of the patient aren’t aligned, it’s going to cause more issues than it does solving the initial problem.

Majority of time in these cases, the patient will build a resistance to wanting to complete the exercise, even the idea of doing the exercise will start to become daunting.

For those who have long term, Chronic Pain conditions – we highly recommended doing some form of exercise. Exercise that you GENUINELY ENJOY DOING!

If you enjoy it, you’ll prioritise it, you’ll make time for it and you’ll do it. Even if this exercise is not the chosen or prescribed exercise, it will be far better than doing nothing at all.

Not only will it help your joints, nerves, and muscles, but your mental well-being will improve greatly. You’ll have better function, better sleep, better brain health… the benefits are infinite…

Find what it is you enjoy. Here’s a short list of different ways you can start including physical activity into your routine:
��‍♂️ Walking (Maybe take your dog if you have one, or you can jump on a treadmill)
�� Biking (There’s some really great trails in the city if you live nearby and have a bike!)
��‍ Water Sports (Swimming or aerobics)
�� ‍Pilates or Yoga (Can do it with friends in a class or online)
�� Playing sport (Join a local team or play for fun with your family and friends)

There is something for everyone, no matter your age or skill…
Check with your GP or health professional before trying a new exercise, and focus on being consistent rather than over doing it!

Tip #4 - Reduce Stress

Living with Chronic Pain is stressful, it interferes with your livelihood. But what about external stress? Can it cause your Chronic Pain to worsen?

It sure can – and here’s how!

According to HealthDirect,
“Stress is a common and normal physical response to challenging or new situations. When you are stressed, your body releases stress hormones such as adrenaline. This brings on physical changes in your body, which help you respond to the stressful situation”

Many of these hormones and neurotransmitters can increase the sensitivity of the nervous system, which results in the experience of pain.

External stressors that may trigger your pain can include:
�� Financial hardship
�� Relationship issues
�� Work issues & working too much
�� Daily hassles

These factors link to the onset, exacerbation, and attenuation of the pain problem.

What can you do to help reduce external stressors, or to manage your stress in a way so that it does not aggravate your pain?

�� Getting a good sleep, and enough of it, every night
�� Eating a balanced diet
�� Being active and moving your body
�� Slowing down your breathing

It’s really important to have a health professional who you trust and are comfortable to talk to regarding your emotional states. If the clinician is aware of any external stressors you are facing, they can explain in a deeper context what it means and what you can do about it, specific to your pain condition and circumstances.

It can be really hard to reduce your stress levels, especially if you live a very busy life or have important responsibilities. Take time for yourself and focus on your health, as its just as important!

Lastly, Tip #5 - Seek a Health Professional who will support you!

When you are suffering with Chronic Pain, you need someone in your corner to help you along the way. It’s not going to be a quick fix and more often than not, the journey to answers and relief is as debilitating as the pain itself.

If this is you, you are not alone… According to Chronic Pain Australia, 3.4 million Australians are affected by Chronic Pain, and only 1 out of 100 people will receive multidisciplinary care.

To help you get help, here’s some things you should be looking for when choosing a health professional:

�� They know what they’re doing.

A health professional who focuses on a specific area of specialty should be expected to have a higher degree of knowledge and experience treating your condition.

�� They stay up to date with new research and findings.

Unfortunately, there is several practitioners who are somewhat ‘stuck in their ways’ and don’t ‘believe’ in new concepts, theories, treatments and methods. The reality is research is ever evolving. We are learning new things all the time – just look at where headache treatment was only 10 years ago!

�� They are confident in their diagnosis and treatment.

A health professional who has provided you with a diagnosis should know what outcomes to expect and by when. A recommended course of action that details what the treatment process will look like should be provided.

�� They are honest and transparent with you.

If things aren’t going how they expect, if they know a different course of action is required, if they know they are unable to help... they need to tell you.

�� They give you the time of day.

Sounds quite simple, but great health professionals are the ones who are not only committed, but determined to help you. They will be the ones who listen to you and what you have to say, your concerns, your questions and your thoughts…

I hope these points help you find the person you’re looking for, we strive to be that person for our patients. It’s everything we stand for.

Want to know if we can help you?

Headache and Migraine 'Triggers'

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 02:00:00 GMT

Triggers… Did you know that they may not be as important as you might think?

We get a lot of questions asking why certain things trigger a person’s headache to begin. Most often we hear things like red wine, chocolate, stress or not sleeping enough. In the literature these things are called “triggers”. It’s common for patients to identify what their triggers are - so that they can avoid these triggers with the intent of actually not getting the headaches and migraines anymore. While this might seem simple, surely its easy going without a few things, but there's a problem with this approach…

At some points, sometimes there are legitimate things that can cause headache and migraine to happen, like when a person has an allergy. So if you've got something like celiac disease or are allergic to some kind of substance, and genuinely allergic to it, then your inflammatory response may cause the headaches and migraines to happen.

However, with triggers like red wine, chocolate, bananas, tomatoes.. it is common that sometimes the migraine happens and sometimes it doesn't.

For example; We often hear people say “I can have half a glass of wine and I'm fine, but if I have one glass of wine I'm not” or “I can have half a glass of wine if I'm not tired, but if I'm really tired and have half a glass of wine then I'm wiped out for three days”.

It’s really quite mystifying! Triggers that sometimes happen with patients leave them feeling baffled as to what's going on.

So lets go back a step… what is the cause of the headaches and migraines in the first place?

Headaches and migraines occur when you have a sensitization process happening at the back of your brain at the top of your spinal cord in what's called your ‘brainstem’. There is a lot of different areas that pass in through this special area. Such as the neck, jaw, face, your skin around your face, and a few things from your fight or flight response, your tongue and your ears as well. Also of course, the feeling of the blood vessels inside your brain also have an influence here.

All of these things go into the same part of your brain.

Then what happens is that part of the brain becomes sensitized. So, if there's anything that's out of the ordinary for any of those things, all of a sudden it starts to become a bit of a problem. If you've already got a sensitized system and then you have something that impacts the serotonin level that's going through your bloodstream or perhaps the blood pressure going up or down, then those are normal changes in serotonin, those normal changes in blood pressure, those normal changes in posture perhaps start to cause a headache and a migraine to happen when generally it shouldn't and normally it doesn't.

So… knowing this, instead of looking at what triggers we can avoid… It may be more beneficial to look at what is sensitizing your system in the first place.

What is the cause of a sensitized system?

The most common one is the top of the neck. The top three joints of the neck can sensitize that system really, really nastily in some people (often, it's actually just one joint). When one or all of these joints are not moving nicely, it can cause a myriad of different problems like; headaches, migraines of nausea, vomiting, dizziness.

Here’s our way of explaining it….

If, say for example, a parcel was being sent from overseas to arrive here in Australia. The parcel is a box, and in the box was a hat, sunglasses, shorts and a book inside. Now as it is ready to be sent… a person in the warehouse puts a bag of anthrax into the box. The next thing you know… it’s all packaged up in the one box and sent to customs in Australia.

Obviously when it gets to customs in Australia, the alarms go off, it goes absolutely bananas. The red light starts to shake, the alarms go off, the dogs start to bark. The right squad comes in to work it out.

You can agree that there's nothing wrong with the hat, sunglasses, shorts or the book in the box...

But the whole box is being shown as being dangerous because there's anthrax in it, okay?

So, on its own, the hat, the sunglasses, the shorts and the book are actually all pretty good, but because the box has anthrax in it, the alarm system says that it's actually really, really dangerous and that box should be treated with absolute caution.

This is kind of what happens with headache and migraine. If you've got something that's sensitizing the system. Say for example, the neck is acting as the anthrax in this situation. When you have extra things going into that box, e.g. a bit more tired than usual, a bit more exercise than usual, a bit more hormones or less hormones than usual, a bit more serotonin or less serotonin than usual. Then those changes are being interpreted as a really big alarm signal when it comes to the headache and migraine.

So, we need to find out what the anthrax is in your delivery box, I suppose. Majority of the time it's the neck that's causing that to happen.

The advice I would give is to get your neck checked by someone who knows what they're doing. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who claim to know what they're doing. What we have created is an eBook that explains this part of the brain. This part of the brain is called the T rigeminal Cervical Nucleus , but we like to refer to it as ‘The Headache Hub’.

If you're interested in getting a copy of that feel free to click the image below, and the PDF version will start to automatically download. Have a read through what it's all about. It's about finding out what's sensitizing the system in the first place so that we can get your headaches and migraines under control.

Hope that has been helpful – if you have any questions at all – feel free to reach out to us here ! Cheers and bye for now.

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Is your Headache and Migraine coming from your Neck?

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What to do if your Back Pain is so DEEP you can't touch it?

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 02:17:19 GMT

Are you a person living with back pain that's so deep that you can't touch it?

Can you feel the pain right at the bottom of the back? Does it hurt when you try to move?

If you’ve tried all the massages and products in the world - the massage guns, foam rollers, tennis balls, all the rubbing, and poking just to try reach the pain in the hopes of relieving it… Then today's blog is for you.

We are sharing with you two top secrets (that you may not have heard of), about how to get rid of that deep, low back pain.

Firstly, before we go any further, it’s important we rule out this:

If you have back pain, that is constant, that's there at night, it's worsening and you're also losing weight or there's other health issues that are coming along with it, you need to go to the GP to make sure that there is nothing nasty happening. We're talking cancers, tumors, all those nasties. Especially, if it has come on out of the blue. This is something that we don’t want to be missed!

However, if we're assuming that everything is all clear, and there’s no reason to believe anything sinister is occurring, then here are the two secrets to know what's going on with your deep seated, low back pain.

Number one, there is a muscle that's very, very deep at the front of your spine. This muscle is called the psoas muscle, and it attaches from T-12 down to L-5 and down into your hip, as you can see in the diagram. It’s covered by organs, nerves, other muscles and skin! We call this muscle the hidden prankster, because a lot of people forget that it's actually there. The pain from this muscle, even though the muscle is at the front of your spine, it’s felt deeply in your back.

If this muscle hasn't been assessed or treated before, then this should be your first port of call for consideration. By large, a lot of patients coming through that have been through their transverses of abdominal exercise, have been through their Pilates, tried a lot of different back pain strategies, and it's just not quite getting to where it needs to get to. That psoas muscle is the missing link in a lot of those cases.

How do we know if it’s the Psoas Muscle causing your pain?

A few hints to know that it's psoas, is generally you’ll have difficulty getting up from a chair, it feels like a real struggle to straighten up. The second one is, it's a very deep-seated pain where you're trying to massage, but you just can't get to the spot. Lastly, movement and rotation of your back is unpleasant and difficult.

If Psoas is the issue, it needs to be assessed safely through the tummy. It should not be hacked at, or pushed or rubbed really hard, because it’s in the vicinity of really important vessels. It needs to be done carefully and skilfully. Certainly, our clinicians here know how to do that and know how to assess it properly, to get the best results.

Number two, there’s a second muscle that can cause deep seated, low back pain. You may have heard of this before, if you've been to a physio, is a muscle called the multifidus muscle. It's located in the deepest layer of muscles that are in your spine, which can be six or seven centimeters deep on some people. As you can see in the diagram below it lies very, very close to the spinal column. Now, because of the depth of these muscles, you can massage really, really hard, like even the hardest massage you can imagine, and it won’t quite reach where it needs to. It might only press the first few layers of the muscle.

How do we know if it’s the Multifidus Muscle causing your pain?

Quite often the pain in the back is very localized, instead of it being a up and down type pain. It's in a very tender, specific spot deep in the spine. The main cause of this pain is trigger points in that multifidus muscle.

The best way to relieve the trigger points in multifidus muscles is with a technique called dry needling. Dry needling is a technique that uses an acupuncture needle to put into the muscle itself, to make it twitch and make the muscle get better from there.

It often gives a huge amount of relief to those people that have a trigger point in the multifidus muscles.

The second way of knowing is that it gets fatigued when you do activity. So, it can feel normal just doing your normal everyday things, but as soon as you do something a little bit more than that, it starts to get tired, and you get sore very locally in your back. This tells us it's more a fatigue issue, and the solution to that is to strengthen the multifidus muscle. The best way to do so is with our MedX medical lumbar extension machine. It isolates the movement of the spine, so that those muscle must lift the weight, making them much stronger.

Here’s a little secret. For most people with low back pain, it's actually a combination of both of these muscles – the psoas and the multifidus. It's a tightness at the front of the spine and decreased strength at the back of the spine. The first port of call for us - is to strengthen the lower back, loosen up the front of the spine, and see how much relief we can get from having more efficient movement.

Of course, if that doesn't work have plan B and plan C as well.

If this deep lower back pain is something that you struggle with, then it's best to have a chat to us . Contact us and let us know what's going on with your back. We can have a chat with you before you come into the clinic to see if it's worth getting an assessment, because we want to make sure that we're not wasting people's time or money.

Alternatively, we have a low back pain form that you can access by clicking here . If you’d prefer to, you can fill this out first and we will let you know if we think it’s worth visiting us.

I hope that's been helpful. Stay tuned as we'll be posting a new blog in another fortnight! ��

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Everything to know about Chronic Neck Pain!

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 02:24:26 GMT

If you've been living with long term neck pain, neck stiffness, neck weakness or have difficulty turning your neck– then this blog is going to rock your world.

Our patients with neck pain often report:

Stiffness, soreness and aching pain
Difficulty turning their head in different directions
Feeling like it constantly needs to be stretched
Feeling like their head is 'too heavy' for their neck
Referred pain from the neck into their shoulder/s and/or arm/s
Referred pain from the neck into their head causing headaches

Generally, when you have pain in your neck, the muscles adjacent to where the pain is, start to not work as well. It's like your brain cheats by moving in a different way so it doesn't hurt. However, the muscles that it doesn't use anymore become inhibited, and rarely used. When those muscles are inhibited, they become less strong. The joints adjacent to those muscles become stiff and tight, and you may not be able to move and rotate your neck freely, easily or without pain.

We want to do two things when we're solving a neck issue.

1. We're wanting to get the neck moving first, and

2. We're wanting to get it as strong as it possibly can be.

There are two sections of the neck that we need to focus on. The first is the top of the neck and the second is the bottom of the neck. Now the top of the neck is responsible for most of the turning and nodding. Then the lower neck, there’s a bit of movement in tilting, a bit of turning, a bit of looking up as well. It basically just comes along for the ride.

When people are stiff through their neck, there's some kind of imbalance between the top of the neck moving and the bottom of the neck moving. For example, those suffering with neck pain, will often only use the top of their neck to look upwards, rather than using the entirety of their neck.

So firstly, we need to ensure the patient has a nice even movement between the top of the neck and the bottom of the neck. We can do that by number of different ways and means.

Once we get the movement, we need to make sure that the muscles are strong enough to be able to perform the movement over and over again, without the muscles becoming fatigued and becoming sore. We want them to become really strong and less inhibited.

How do we strengthen the Neck muscles?

The most efficient way is by using our wonderful piece of equipment, the Multi-Cervical unit .

Now it's called the Multi-Cervical unit because you're able to move and lift weight in all different directions. Up, down and sideways, plus you can combine movements – for example, having the angle positioned sideways whilst moving upwards, or you could be positioned forward but move your head towards your shoulder… and so forth.

So, this bit of equipment is able to strengthen the muscles in whichever direction where you have the most restriction in terms of your strength. Think of it like this, a whiplash accident for example, people aren't typically hit square on from behind - where their head completely straight. Often, their head is turned a bit, or they might have been thrown around a little bit in one direction or another. Another example, is those people that have wry neck pain – it’s likely to be more rotational rather than extension movements. This is how we tailor the treatment program to each individual – the most important thing is getting the muscles strong in the direction that needs it the most, as well as gaining a bit of global strength.

In addition to using the machine, we teach you exercises at home to maintain the strength in between sessions and of course, to self-manage over time.

When it comes to neck pain, we can make things more complicated than what it needs to be. We can do little exercises that are tiny little nods, we can do all sorts of joint positional things, closing eyes and using all sorts of different manoeuvres. For some people that works really well, but I'm talking to vast majority of people here with persistent pain (the most common cases of neck pain and neck stiffness) , these are the top 2 things you need to do. 1. Get the neck moving well with reduced pain. 2. Get the neck strong.

If you do those two things and keep it simple and have a strategy over a period of time, you are more than likely going to get the results that you want. You'll be able to do the things that you want to do, much more often, without the burden of needing to change your schedule, change work, change work setups, worry about seats in your car or be scared about checking blind spots. The strategies and techniques that we do here at the clinic can help you and guide you to get the result that you need.

Not sure if we can help you out?

That's totally ok! Feel free to fill in our Neck Pain Questionnaire, which you can do so by clicking here . We will have a look over the form and contact you via your preference. We will ask a few questions that will give us a good idea if we are able to help, and then recommend if it is worth coming in for an assessment.

I hope this information is helpful. We would love to help you and your neck pain, like we have thousands of others.

To start the process, simply fill in our questionnaire here .

Or for answers asap, book in our one-hour consultation and we can tell you exactly what is going on and what you can do about it! Click here .

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What causes Hormonal Headaches and Migraines?

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 03:16:26 GMT

If you're a lady who lives with migraines once a month and can set the calendar to when your next headache or migraine will come, then this blog is for you...

We may just unlock the hidden secret as to why your headaches and migraines continue to be a burden, no matter what it is that you've tried before! If you live with hormonal headaches, you will often have to plan your diary and events around this time of the month, because when your cycle hits - you may feel knocked out, end up in bed, and have to take plenty of medication.

Within the last 5-10 years, a new understanding of how headaches and migraines occur has come into focus. They are caused by a sensitization process. It’s a process that occurs at the bottom of your brain... an area which takes in all of the nerves from pretty much the top lip, all the way up and over to the back of your neck. In essence, your eyes, your ears, your teeth, your tongue, your lips, the back of your neck and the blood vessels inside your head all pass through the same area.

What's less recognized is that this nerve centre is modulated by a chemical called serotonin. Serotonin is your happy chemical - the one that causes you to feel deep love and affection. It's the hormone that makes you feel good!

When we're talking about hormonal headaches and hormonal migraines, it's important to understand what happens in the menstrual cycle through the month. In mid cycle what happens is that the serotonin increases, then decreases at the end of the cycle, and will then return back to the normal amount during other times of the cycle.

So, what has this got to do with your headaches and migraines?

Well, there used to be a really strong thought that it's all about the changes in the hormones that cause these headaches and migraines to happen. But, there's a study that came out a number of years ago that showed that it didn't matter if you got headaches or migraines or not, those hormones did the same thing. So some people were getting the headaches and migraines, others weren't, but the hormones were acting the same way.

What does that tell us about how the hormonal headaches and migraines work?

Well, it might not be the hormones to blame in the first place. What this sensitization means is that if the levels of serotonin is too much or too little, your brain perceives that normal change as a threat. It sees it as something that it needs to have a reaction to, even when there is no need.

The problem is, this menstrual cycle is a normal process, and it happens to all females, so what's causing this whole sensitization process to happen? It's not the hormones because that is just a normal process.

So, what could it be?

Let's go back to talking about that Nerve Centre at the bottom of the brain. There's something that's sensitizing this nerve centre... and can cause the hormonal headaches and migraines to occur. What we've found over a long period of time here treating at The Headache and Pain Management Centre, through many courses we've done, through many thousands of patients that we've seen over the years is that quite often it's the neck that's sensitizing this whole process to occur.

Even though the neck has nothing to do with your hormones, it is the "hidden prankster" that's sensitizing this area. It's almost like a ticking time bomb going off! So when your serotonin drops, your brain perceives that change in the hormones as the threat (even when it isn't), because it's already sensitized from what's going on with the nerve signals coming from your neck.

What this means in practical terms, there is usually a joint or a muscle or sometimes a combination of both, that's sending a signal into that nerve centre.

We like to explain this like a dripping pipette into the water, which over time fills a glass up to 85, 90%. Then at the mensural cycle, the hormones push that water causing it to overflow the glass and causing the headache to happen, so to speak. The hormones themselves are only a little bit of the problem, but the real problem is lying dormant for the rest of the month.

It's a bit of an interesting concept if you've never heard that before, but we've seen it way too often to know that this is something that really does need to be considered.

How do we know if it's your neck?

Here’s a few hints to know if your hormonal headaches might be coming from your neck…

1. If your headache is on one side and can swap across to the other side.

So, one month it might be on the right, the other month it might be on the left. If it's moving around, the neck is a prime suspect. About the only thing that can cause a headache to move like this, is your neck joints and the neck muscles. It can be stiffer on one side one month, stiffer on the other side another month, which causes the headache to be on the right or the left.

2. If your headache is locked to one side.

If you have a think about it - if it's a genuine hormonal issue, the hormones will have an impact on both sides of the body. You can't just have hormones impact the right side of your brain or the left side of your brain. It impacts your whole system!

In the few cases where it is genuinely hormonal, it's generally a really explosive headache that is on both sides and nothing is able to touch it, and the neck will often assess clear in these cases. But if it's on one side or the other side and it's locked there, then it's really worth having your neck assessed to see if the neck is driving this pattern to happen and the hormones are more an innocent bystander.

3. If other medical interventions haven’t worked

Lastly, if you've had your hormones looked at and they're normal, if you've had other medications that you've tried, if there's been birth control that you've tried, there's been other interventions that have been tried and nothing seems to work, then it's really important to have the neck assessed because it might just be the missing link in the puzzle. It might well be the thing, the hidden prankster if you like, that's causing all of these issues to occur.

If you are in one of those three groups then it's really, really important to get your neck assessed, to see if there is an issue with the neck causing these hormonal headaches and migraines to occur.

How do we assess the neck?

That's a really good question.

It may be a genuine hormonal issue, or it could be your neck. What we do here at The Headache and Pain Management Centre that allows us to determine whether or not it’s your neck that’s the cause, is a very skilled and comprehensive assessment of the top of the neck and all of the other factors that might be driving your headache and migraine to occur.

Our process:

First step - If you’re unsure whether it’s worthwhile having the assessment, we happily offer free 15 minute phone calls to listen to your story. Which, based on our judgement will be able to recommend if an initial consultation is suitable for you. Everyone is an individual. Everyone has different stories, and we want to make sure that you're not wasting your time or money trying something new.

Second step - Is to have an assessment with us, with one of our physiotherapists. This goes for one hour where we look at the history, we see what's been happening, what the impacts are, what you're hoping to get out of treatment. We will then do a full physical assessment to decipher if your headaches and migraines are coming from your neck. We know what we're looking for here. We're looking for stiffness in the joints, we're looking at the way that your neck moves, we're looking at the way that the muscles are behaving at the top of your neck as well, to see if it's something worth considering.

If it is something worth considering, what we'll do is we'll tell you how we can help you out. We will tell you exactly how long it might take, how many sessions it might take, what we'll be doing in the room, what you'll need to do at home. We may recommend other interventions or scans or other things and will work alongside your GP to get the results that you need. We've been doing this now for a decade! We have many, many people that we've helped with these hormonal headaches and migraines.

We want you to be the next person that we can help out. If this is something that interests you, if you are at your wits' end and wanting some help with this - the best thing you can do is to book a phone call with one of our team, using the link below.

https://calendly.com/hpmcentre/10-minute-phone-call-with-hpmcentre

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A Tour of the MedX Machine

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Sun, 08 May 2022 23:00:03 GMT

The MedX Medical Lumbar Extension Machine is a very effective way to isolate and strengthen the muscles of the lower back.

The machine will force the back to do all of the work, and to do it in a way that is safe, objectively measured, and tailored to your age, weight, height and ability to move.

In order to fo rce the back to do the work, it's crucial to make sure that your legs and hips can't "cheat" and to do this, it's necessary to restrict leg and hip movement.

Yes, the machine looks a bit intense, but the reality is that this equipment can be adapted to a person of any shape or size, and tailored to how far you feel safe moving, and should be PAIN-FREE to use.

The pictures below show the key features:

The Weight Stack is on the side of the machine and can go up in increments of 1 foot pound of Torque. The machine doesn't measure how heavy you can lift, but rather how much force it takes to move the chair. This is actually really important because for those who've felt weak or tired in their backs, this is actually the measurement that is the most important. If you can't produce enough force to lift or hold yourself up, or lift that box or child off the ground, then the machine will tell you what you need to do so that you can.

The Angle Measure can be locked in at increments of 3 degrees, right up to full bending. This is excellent because if you have a disc or muscle that gets cranky, we can lock the machine in so that all movement is short of pain, while still getting the benefit of using your muscles. This feature has helped people even with acute, full-blown disc bulges get relief without the need for surgery.

Knee Pads and Thigh strap are there to hold your legs down so that you can't lift out of the chair to help the movement.

Thigh Strap Adjuster allows the physio to tighten the strap enough to restrict any hip movement.

Foot Plates and The Adjuster allows the physio to secure your legs tightly, to the point where you are able to just lift your heels.

Handle Bars are there to assist and support you while you do the movement.

Counterweight on the side allows us to standardise your data measurements - obviously if you weigh more, you can already lift more from a baseline. This feature balances out your body mass, so we can compare people to their age, height and weight - while having an understanding that everyone's functional needs are different. Thankfully because we have seen thousands of patients over years, we know what the right target should be.

Computer Screen shows a graph of how strong you are compared to 'normal' - there is a line with the average strength for age/gender, a line for one standard deviation above, and another line for one standard deviation below. Then, most importantly - a line is drawn to show the your back strength in comparison to a "normalised" population.

All of these components combined together, will give you platform and opportunity to help relieve your back pain. It can also allow you to see your progress measured objectively in a visual format. If you would like to learn more about the Lumbar MedX Machine, click here .⠀⠀

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How does Pain happen in your Brain?

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 23:00:03 GMT

When it comes to pain, and when it comes to the way that pain is processed, one thing that you might not know is that pain is 100% produced by your brain. So, even though you feel it in a particular body part, it's your brain that produces the feeling of pain.

Pain is like another sense. There's a lot of information that comes in through our senses, through our eyes, our ears, our skin, and so forth. It's the brain's job to process all of those signals, before you then experience what you might see as a colour, what you might hear as a sound, what you might feel as a sensation.

The experience of pain can be different for everybody. This is why some people feel pain more than others; why some people can have a very minor feeling, as opposed to others that have a major feeling, to the same input.

Let me explain briefly what goes on when you have pain...

You have a whole stack of nerves that go into your spinal cord. All of these nerves, for example the ones that run from your hand, your feet, are what we call the peripheral nerves. They all filter in and meet in the spinal cord. The signal goes up the nerves, up the spinal cord, and then sent up to your brain for processing those signals.

So remember, when signals are sent from your body to your spinal cord it's not pain yet, it's not even a feeling yet.

It's basically electricity that your body is taking in, through special channels called nociceptors.

Your brain then needs to process these signals, along with all of the information that's going on around it at the same time, in order for the "electricity" to become a sensation of any type, like pain.

Let's talk about a really easy example.

Let's say I am in the kitchen, and I'm cooking, and my finger touches the frying pan... This is what happens in your brain, in real time.

My brain goes, "Oh, okay. There's something happening, but I'm not sure what. Let's go through the process." When the finger touches the fry pan, my thermal receptors in my finger start to activate, and sends signals up my nerve, into my spinal cord, and then shoots up through my spinal cord and up to my brain.

My brain then asks the question, "What does this mean? What happens here?" Then, my brain starts to take in some more information about what's going on around the place, to form a decision:

Visual Cortex: "What am I looking at right now?" "Well, My finger is touching a black shiny surface, next to some bacon, I'm in the kitchen, there's fire underneath this shiny glass surface."
Auditory Cortex: "What am I hearing?" "I'm hearing the crackling of the bacon underneath it, hearing a couple of birds outside in the kitchen, but it's mostly the crackling that I'm hearing."
Planning Cortex: "What am I doing tomorrow?" "I need to have these fingers for tomorrow for work, it's actually really important for my fingers to be working"
Past Memory Cortex: "What do we remember about situations like this?" "My mum burnt her finger like this years ago, and she would not stop complaining about it, there was a blister on her finger, it must have really hurt."

My brain takes in all of the information! From the nociceptors coming from my finger, all of these other inputs, pretty much everything that can possibly be causing a physical issue, and everything that's going on in, and around you. The brain then asks a very important question:

Do I need pain now? Or do I not need pain now?

My brain will go, "Hey, this is potentially dangerous. So therefore pain is the outcome."

That is the decision, and that’s what is going to happen.

What's important to note – is that this whole process from the signals going up your nerves and into your brain, happens EXTREMELY fast. So, the response after all of that is ‘ouch!’ and my brain has decided to change my behaviour and take the finger out of the frying pan. That’s normal pain.

That's how normal pain generally works to protect us, so that we're not stepping on roads and burning our feet, we're not chopping our fingers off, we're not getting frostbite at the end of our nose, and we're not doing things that are actually, inherently dangerous to us, because pain protects us from danger.

Now, I know what you're thinking, what's happening with people that have pain all the time, or what's happening when you have pain that's there when it's inconvenient, and it's not useful anymore?

You might've hurt yourself 5 - 10 years ago, and now you're getting pain all the time - it might be after a car accident, it might be after hurting your back a long time ago, and yet the pain is still there.

What we now know is that persistent pain is less about tissue damage, and more about the sensitivity of your system.

When we've got a bit of sensitivity in the system, what can happen is that the spinal cord can crank up the signal by up to 100 times. It's like you get a normal signal coming in, and then this other signal comes up that’s much stronger than what it should be.

With all things being equal, your brain is going to look at that signal and go, "Wow, that's a really big signal." It's then going to go, "Wow, this is dangerous." Therefore, we're going to get some pain as a result of that.

What can also happen, is your brain may decide the signal is dangerous for an illogical, or an irrational reason. It’s important to know, that it's not your doing. For example, this might be why you're able to do some gardening, but the moment you vacuum, your back is really sore. This is caused by the context under which you're doing it. The vacuuming, for whatever reason, is causing your brain to say "Yeah, I don't like that" and give you pain as the output, but gardening may be more "Yeah, I enjoy this!"

When everything should be normal - there's normal movement, the past injury has healed and scans are clear, but this awful pain is still there - means the signals coming in are being cranked up in the spinal cord, and causing a sensitization process to occur.

The third thing that can happen is, a relatively normal signal comes in, but there are other contexts that are coming into your system which are tricking your brain into giving pain when it doesn't really need it. It’s very important to understand the pain that you're experiencing is very real, however the reason why your pain is there, may be different to what you think that it might be.

Most of the people we treat here at The Headache and Pain Management Centre have one of two things, when it comes to their long-term, undiagnosed, pain condition.

The first thing is: most people have been to see everyone and have tried everything. They’ve been to a physio, chiro, doctor, and tried all of these different treatment methods, so much so that they start to believe their pain will never go away.

A lot of the time, when it comes to Headache and Migraine, it might be a stiff joint in the neck that hasn't been moved in the right way, or in a neck or low back, it could be a muscle that hasn't had the treatment that it has needed. It's unfortunately, somewhat common for these things to be missed. This is why we always do a full assessment on all the things that might be causing the issue. Often by removing the issue, things are much better.

However, more commonly, when people that have fibromyalgia, chronic regional pain syndrome, post whiplash or persistent low back pain, it's more this sensitization process that's happening which we explained above.

Instead of being able to remove the issue, we have to focus on doing things to wind th e system down, so that those signals aren't being amplified quite as much. Therefore, by the time the signals get to the brain, it's not as bad and the brain doesn’t send pain inappropriately.

Secondly, we need to consider all of the other inputs that are coming in that’s causing your brain to produce pain unnecessarily. Common things that could be causing this, are things like anxiety, or fear. However, the biggest one is probably a lack of knowledge about why their pain is there in the first place. Our brain really likes to have an explanation for why things are happening. A lot of the time, our brains take a shortcut, or they take the information that best suits them, or it could be the repetition of incorrect information that has been given over time. What I can tell you categorically is, this is actually how pain works.

To simplify, there's three levels. There's the peripheral, where it's all the nerves going into your spinal cord. So through your arms, your legs and your feet, the skin, things of that nature.

There’s the spinal cord, which takes the signals in, and those signals can be amplified.

Then there’s the brain, which receives the signals and needs to make a decision - if something is dangerous or if it's not dangerous. If your brain concludes that, based on all the things around it, that it is dangerous, then it will give you pain. Even if the reality is that it's not dangerous…

The education around how pain works is really interesting, and for people who do have a long-term chronic pain condition, it's really important to get to know the principles which we have outlined, and really understand it. The more awareness you have about how pain is prescribed and why it has presented in a certain way, the more comfort and control you will have in managing the pain. Whether, that might mean, engaging in movement, a stretch, or perhaps changing your mind set or knowledge base, it’s important that you know what is happening and what can be done to rectify the issue. Which of course, is what we do every single day. We assess, we diagnose, and we organize a treatment plan tailored to you and your needs – to ensure your pain management is on the right pathway to long-term relief.

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What causes Headaches and Migraines where the pain is at the back of your head?

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 23:00:03 GMT

If you have pain in the back of your head with a headache or migraine then this blog is for you.

A lot of the time all the scans are clear and you've been to your doctors and they can't find anything else that's wrong. There's three things that be causing this pain, here it is...

The first and most common cause is a referred pain from the joints, the top three joints at the back of your neck. Most commonly it's a joint right below your skull, just at the top of the neck that can cause some deep tension-like pain that goes right into the back of your head. Sometimes it can refer pain around to the front, into the temples as well. It's really common when you have a very stiff top joint. They often call it the atlas or the atlanto-occipital joint.

We’re talking about the joint between the skull and C1. What needs to be careful when you are having that assessed, is that it's moving in the correct direction. If you’re seeing a chiropractor who is manipulating it, doing a really big crack or a click or something with it – it may not be the best thing for it. It actually might just need a bit of a glide on the joint to desensitize it.

The second thing. There's a lot of muscles that attach into the top of the neck - they attach from the skull down to C1 and into C2. So into the top bone, which I said is the atlas. The second one called C2 or the axis is what it's called. There's a lot of muscles that attach into the head and a lot of muscles that go down, attach into the neck. Those muscles themselves can refer pain into your head. So even though it feels like your head is the issue, it's the muscles themselves, which are referring the pain. Some of the muscles are called the suboccipitals. The occipital muscles. Rectus capitis. There's a whole swathe of little ones that can refer pain into the back of the head and they're really important.

Muscles can often be forgotten when it comes to headaches. Although, it’s so important for them to be assessed to decide the best course of treatment. Do we need to stretch them? Do we need to do something with a bit of massage. Is dry needling an option? Perhaps it's strengthening that's the issue. Reality is, one thing that works for one person might not work for the other person.

The third one that can refer pain into the back of the head, is a nerve issue. It's not really that common, but when it is this condition, it is really painful. It’s called occipital neuralgia. There's a nerve called the greater occipital nerve that comes up and supplies the skin predominantly. It feels really compressive when you've got an issue there and sometimes it can sting and it can stab at the back of the head. It's really, really nasty when you do get it and it's really, really painful. So that nerve itself can be a driver of pain. There can be inflammation around and it can be compressed or it could just be sensitized. So there's nothing wrong with the nerve, but the signals coming from the nerve, is actually tricking your brain into thinking that there's something really nasty going on there.

We do see a lot of people that are diagnosed with occipital neuralgia, although the reality is it's actually not the nerve itself that's the issue. It's referred pain, from the joint or from the muscle on its own.

It's really important to get an assessment if you have got pain at the back of the head. It can be just diagnosed as a tension type headache where it's a lot of paracetamol or other things that are being prescribed to try to wind them down. Perhaps some stretching or some movement might do a little bit of a trick, but not the whole thing. Which is why it’s so important to look at the entire picture. What's sensitizing the whole system? Is it a nerve, muscle, or joint. Is it a combination? Because when we're talking about pain of any type, it's all about the sensitivity of the nervous system, that is the issue. All of those other things are driving that sensitivity to happen. So if it's your muscle, if it's a joint, if it's your nerve, it does need to be assessed.

I hope this helps and gives you some understanding of what may be happening. Please feel free to click here to get in touch if you have any questions.

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What is Pudendal Neuralgia?

Sun, 27 Mar 2022 23:00:03 GMT

Pudendal Neuralgia... This particular condition is relatively uncommon. Unfortunately, patients can feel embarrassed to have this condition, as it affects your pudendal nerve, which comes out of your sacrum and then pretty much supplies everything in your jocks effectively. The inside of your thigh, the external genitalia, and also a branch of the nerve that goes down the back of your leg. The symptoms you can get from this really nasty condition can differ for males and females. With females, it can feel like a really strong period pain, a lower abdominal pain, and with men, it can feel like they've been 'kicked in the balls' effectively. One thing that men in particular tell us, is it feels like their jocks are too tight - that they feel like they constantly have to adjust their underpants, and it's not helping. It just feels like this really deep abdominal pain, typically on the one side where it's affected. On both sexes, there’s symptoms such as burning and painful urination and pain with defecation as well.

Other symptoms may include pins and needles and numbness on the inside of the thigh and the external genitalia. Typically we find with these patients, they can get tailbone pain and what's called coccyx pain as well, where it's really painful to sit and lean back because it feels like there's a sharp pain on your tailbone.

As you can see this condition is really quite awful. It can be very uncomfortable, certainly going to the toilet is affected and just other activities of daily living like sitting is not pleasant. Most people with this condition often go to the doctor first due to the pain in their lower abdominal, or pain when they're going to the toilet. Quite often they're misdiagnosed as having some kind of infection. They're diagnosed as having period pain. They're diagnosed with effectively anything else. They’re sent for all sorts of scans and sent to different specialists around the place to try to work out what the cause of this pain is. In some really bad cases, they can get some false positives where you can get an ultrasound done, and it looks like surgery needs to be done. Although, the reality is the pain could be coming from something else, and that something else is the pudendal nerve.

What causes the pudendal nerve to get irritated and have pain?

Where it can get irritated is in the SIJ - your sacroiliac joint. It’s the big sort of bone right at the bottom of your spine that matches and joins in with both pelvic bones. If it's not moving well it can cause the nerve to get irritated. It typically happens to those who sit a lot and is more common in cyclists than any other population, more because they're bending right forward over the handle bar. So it's putting pressure and strain through that pudendal nerve. After they stop cycling, they feel like they've got tailbone pain or pain on the inside of the groin.

How can Pudendal Neuralgia be treated?

Firstly, to have a look and see what the range through the pelvis is like. See how the sacrum and pelvis are moving in relation to each other. If there's one pudendal nerve, like one side that's affected, then basically the movement of that pelvis on the sacrum is going to be affected on that side as well. The treatment can be relatively simple. There was a really good protocol that was designed by another Brisbane physiotherapist about 10-15 years ago... His name's Peter Dornan. His protocol was showing enormous results, more so than any other treatment for this condition had ever seen before. So much so that the research knocked it back because the results were unbelievably good. The good news is that it's now been published, and it showed that 90% of people when you follow this protocol can actually get some really good effects and results from following this protocol. It involves getting the sacrum moving, doing some strength work around the sacrum and pelvis and doing some strength work with the abdomen as well.

Other things that can affect the treatment of this condition is the tightness in the muscle called ‘Psoas’, which runs down the front of your spine. There's a couple of nerves that run through psoas, one that's called the iliohypogastric nerve and the other one that's called the ilioinguinal nerve. Also the genitofemoral nerve. They all flow through that psoas muscle and sort of talk to one another to cause us to have a functional deficit to happen. It’s necessary to have a look at the movement of the sacrum. Look at where the nerve comes out. Get it moving in any way possible. Typically, exercise is the best way to do that and you'll find that the symptoms start really decreasing a lot in terms of being able to feel things again, in order to have less pain when you're going to the toilet and things of that nature.

It's not uncommon to see it in people with chronic low back pain either, where you have a lot of low back pain sort of on one side. They find that there's these other unrelated, well, what they think are unrelated symptoms that are happening either on the inside of their groin or in that area. If you find this is you, it's really important to talk to your doctor or physio about the potential of them being linked to see if there's actually a relationship there. A lot of the time you can just ask the question and sure enough, there actually is an issue there and it can crack the case, not just for the pudendal nerve, but also for low back pain as well.

Is surgery needed for Pudendal Neuralgia?

Surgery generally isn't needed for this. It used to be the routine thing to treat this, but it's found that it's only a 50% success rate and a 50% chance of making it worse. We now have a protocol which can be followed to get this right 90% of the time.

I hope this was helpful, please feel free to get in touch with us via private message or contact us here if you have any questions, or if you are suffering with this condition yourself – let us know and we can assist you in the best way we can.

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What does it mean when the pain is THROBBING in your temple?

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 23:00:03 GMT

What does it mean when the pain is throbbing in your temple?

It could be a tension type feeling or a throbbing migraine.

It can throb and ache either on one side or both and can be pretty frightening when you have this for the first time.

The key when it comes to temple pain, is it’s really important to get it checked out.

This is especially true if:

it's brand new and "the worst headache you've ever had"
if the pain sufferer is a child
if it's a brand new headache for someone over the age of 50.

Basically, we want to make sure that anything nasty is ruled out first.

If you've had all the tests, you've had a scan and your GP or your doctor is quite satisfied that there's nothing dangerous happening, the next thing to look at is what is causing it. When you have pain in the temple where it's kind of thumping away, sometimes it can pulse or throb with your heartbeat, it's important to work out why the pain is actually there.

Now here's the thing. When you have temple pain, it's actually no different to having pain in your forehead, or having pain in your eye... because the pain that comes into your head all comes from the same place. It’s a place in your brain which takes in all the nerves from your top lip all the way and up and over to the back of the neck.

When the pain is throbbing it gives us an idea as to which joint of your neck is referring that pain to your temple. It's really, really common for us to find that it's a referred pain from the joint right up under your skull. It's the joint between your head and the top of your neck. It’s the atlanto-occipital joint, or we call it the OC 1 joint. When we examine the neck to see what's going on, quite often it's actually a movement of that joint right at the very top of your neck.

You might be asking how you can have a really stabbing pain or even a throbbing pain that happens in the side of your head but is coming from your neck? How does that work out?

"It feels like it's my veins pulsing." "It feels like it's my arteries pulsing"... however, its actually a sensitized system that’s causing these headaches or migraines. It’s a normal input that's going through your system - in this case, the feeling of the blood vessels inside your head. Normally those blood vessels you don't feel day to day. You're not always feeling throbbing, because let's face it, every second of every day your heart is beating and it's pumping blood through your body and through your brain. Now, when you have a headache that throbs and pulses like that, it's a bit of an error in the signalling where your brain is interpreting normal input, so normal blood pressure, pulsing of your veins and arteries, and it's taking that signal and getting it wrong - it thinks that it's dangerous. Something is sensitive, and your brain is tricked into thinking the throbbing is something dangerous.

It's a false signal to say there's something not quite right. In actual fact, there's nothing wrong with the vessels themselves, but rather the system that the feeling of the vessels goes through. If you've got a stiff neck, if it's a little bit tight or there's a problem with the joint at the back of your neck, you can actually feel like you're getting a throbbing and pulsing feeling somewhere else. It's not in your neck, you feel it in your temple.

It's really difficult to sort of wrap your head around this concept, as the narrative around throbbing and pulsing headaches for the last 50 years has been well, ‘it must be something to do with the blood vessels because it throbs and it pulses’. But in actual fact, what it is, is a sensitive system, the whole thing is sensitized, and your brain is misreading the signals as there's something wrong with my blood vessels when in actual fact, there's something wrong generally with your neck.

A really good way to know if it’s your neck causing the pain, is that if you get a throbbing feeling on one side of your head and it can swap across to the other side of your head. One day it's on your right, the next day it's on your left, or perhaps it's one week it's on your right, one week it's on your left. If that's the case, then your neck is the prime suspect.

Our recommendation when you have a throbbing, pulsing type headache, is to get it checked out first from your GP. Make sure your blood pressure's fine. Make sure there's no nasties going on with things like temporal arteries and things like that. If that's all clear, then getting your neck checked is the next best thing to do.

You can get a throbbing, pulsing feeling in the side of your head, and it's not the throbbing and pulsing that's the problem, but rather your brain's being tricked into thinking that throbbing and pulsing is the problem. I hope that makes sense!

If there's any questions about this, please contact us here and we will get in touch with you.

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What causes Headaches and Migraines behind your eyes?

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 23:00:03 GMT

Today we are talking about Headaches and Migraines that are, not just in your head, your forehead or to the sides, but right in behind your eye. It can be a really nasty pain, and is often described as a stabbing pain or an exploding feeling coming out of your eye. Some people may get teary eye or their eye will go red.

So what is going on?

The first thing to know about headaches and migraines behind your eyes is that it's not the eyes that are the problem. Quite often, we see people that have gone to optometrists, that have been to all sorts of doctors, ophthalmologists sometimes, to get their eyes assessed and the pressure in their eyes assessed to work out what the issue is. What we find though, by and large, is that those tests are clear, and it leaves people very confused about what the cause may actually be.

To get a good idea of the cause, one big thing to ask yourself is, is the pain in behind one eye, or can it sort of swap eyes? Can it be behind your left eye and then behind your right eye? If the headaches can swap, it is automatically your neck that is the cause. So, if it's something that starts on one side and can switch over between or during attacks, then it's very, very likely that your neck is what's causing that because it's the only thing that can cause the pain to move around.

How can my neck cause something that is so painful in my eye?

That's a really good question. What we know is that the pain is being referring into your eyes and into your eyebrow or just above the eye, or sometimes into the sinus. All of the nerves that pass from those areas all go into the same spot in your brain, as the back of your neck.

Along with the nerves from the skin around your teeth, tongue, lips and around the side of your face. They all go into the same spot.

Usually, when it comes to eye pain, it's normally at the second joint in your neck; the joint between the second and third vertebrae, which most commonly refers this pain.

What do I do if my neck is causing my eye pain?

It’s best for a health professional to look and assess these joints. They will have a feel of the neck joints and see if it's stiff at a particular joint. If we're able to reproduce the familiar pain in your eye, by pushing on the neck joint, and have it reduced under our thumb as we are pushing on it, then basically that is a really good sign that tells us if it’s your neck that is the cause.

The most important thing we need to do - is find out what's sensitizing the whole system. The thing that most commonly sensitizes the system is the back of your neck, and the joints at the back of your neck. Even though the pain is in your eye and it feels like it's exploding or feels like it's really compressive, it's actually something else that's referring pain into the eye, usually, rather than anything in the eye itself.

I hope this has helped answer your questions and hopefully, for some people, you don't need to squint or get new glasses or change computer screen. Perhaps, you just need to find out if your neck is what's referring that pain into your eye area.

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What is a Functional Neurological Disorder?

Sun, 20 Feb 2022 23:00:03 GMT

If you have a multitude of severe, unusual symptoms, and the regular treatments aren't assisting, you probably have a good number of questions running through your head.

What if it’s not my neck? What if it's something different? What if it's something that can't be helped with manual therapy? What else could it be?

In some cases, these are the uncomfortable questions that we as physios have had to ask ourselves, as well.

Functional Neurological Disorder is a very rare condition that's diagnosed, but to our belief, is underdiagnosed and highly stigmatized. It's more and more common the more that you look for it. It’s not easy to explain – but we are going to try our best in this article!

To understand FND clearly, you need to understand how your senses work. That is - why do I feel, what I feel?

Let's take Pain for example, because that's something everyone has experienced.

Knowledge about pain is two fold. The first thing that we know about pain is that it's an output of your brain. So basically what happens is that all the input comes in through your eyes, your nose, your skin, your teeth, your tongue, all of the sensory inputs all come in. It's like a big computer in your brain that takes all that input in and tries to make sense of the world: what you perceive, how you live, what your experience is as a person, what your perception is. It jumbles it all up, scrambles it up, and then your output is what you experience: what you see, what you smell, what you touch, what you taste and what you feel. That's the first thing. Pain is an output.

Some other examples of sensory output might be nausea, might be dizziness, might be hot, might be cold, might be shivering, or it might be that tight feeling that you're feeling in your chest when you're feeling anxious or nervous, like the butterflies in the stomach.

Now, the second thing to know about some of these outputs is that they are protective mechanisms designed to change your behaviour. Pain is a protective mechanism to stop you from doing the activity that's currently hurting. If you're stepping onto a hot road and it's starting to burn the bottom of your foot.. get off that hot road so you don't burn the skin under your foot. Or the pain you feel when putting a finger on a frying pan or pricking a needle into your skin. Those are protective outputs to say, "Look, please stop doing that." Just in case that you might damage your tissue, or you might do some permanent damage. So they are protective mechanisms.

There are also other protective mechanisms like dizziness, nausea, sensitivity to light, sensitivity to sound, fatigue, hunger, thirst. These are all outputs that are telling you to change your behaviour, to do something different. Now, I guess the question is that when you've got things like headache and migraine, the question is what is it actually protecting you from? What is the mechanism, or what is the reason that your brain is trying to protect you?

It’s important to note that majority of the time, it is the neck and head that it is protecting, where basically, your brain is trying to protect against the signals coming from your neck. However, for a small percentage of people – this is not the case, so what else could it be?

It's a question that even the smartest of us continue to grapple with.

We're talking about neurological things here... there are some things that we just don't know yet. The role of say, gut bacteria, for example, or the role of different chemicals, like GABA, CGRP, in the brain aren't fully understood. What are actually the mechanisms of these things?

There are others where the protective instincts by your brain might actually be due to other factors that haven't really strongly been considered yet. That's what this blog is referring to.

It’s this whole other kettle of fish here where the symptoms are extremely severe. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It can make you feel hot or cold. It can make you feel weakness in your arm or your leg. You're losing your speech. You're slurring your words. You're struggling to swallow. There are all these really weird symptoms that you can't seem to make any sense of. This is what are classified as functional neurological disorders - neurological symptoms with no organic cause.

What are Functional Neurological Disorders and how do they work?

Well, basically what it is, is your brain is wound up so much trying to protect you, is that it is pulling up the white flag and it's going, "Whoa, we need to just shut down and do a bit of a restart here." So it can actually present itself in terms of, it almost looks like narcolepsy where you're falling asleep, where you can't stay awake. It could look like an epileptic seizure when you get an attack like this, or it might be uncontrollable tremors in your hand or weakness, or inability to stand up or hold a posture. It can look and present very, very strangely. The baffling thing about this condition is that all of the scans appear clear.

You may have had an MRI scan, because it looks like you've had a stroke or some other catastrophic thing happen, but puzzlingly, it comes out as clear and you're going, "What the hell is going on? What is happening here?" This is one of the things that your brain can actually do when it's under a huge amount of stress and needing "protection". It's where your brain has decided that it needs to protect you from something. It can actually pull up what I call the 'blue screen of death' you'd see on the computer, where it needs a bit of a reboot, it needs a bit of a restart, because it's trying to protect you so hard. There's no real organic or structural cause, and it's looking very confusing.

What we have found is that some cases seem to be related with trauma. Not all the time, but something in your life that has been extremely stressful or has been extremely traumatic, or at the very least your brain has interpreted it as extremely stressful or traumatic. There's quite a history sometimes of childhood trauma, domestic violence, or other awful things have happened.

But other times it can come on insidiously where it's something very small, but your brain has interpreted it as very large, and therefore you get all these symptoms. Now, when you present with all these symptoms, it can kind of look like this cascade of unrelated, really nasty things, where your doctor or professional looks at you and goes, "Well, that can't happen. What's happening with that?"

I've seen patients where they report that their vision is black and white - it's no longer in colour. There have been other patients where they present with this dizziness that's transient, where some days they're completely fine, and then it feels like they are spinning with no rhyme or reason to it. There are others that report that they have these symptoms where it feels like they're disassociated from reality. It feels like they're looking at their body from the outside.

These sorts of functional neurological disorders don't fit neatly into a migraine or headache diagnosis. So, if you've been to a neurologist and they can't quite classify you as a migraine with aura, or a cluster headache or a tension headache, or something under those criteria, then perhaps a functional neurological disorder might be something to consider talking to your GP or to your neurologist about. We do see quite a few come through the clinic because they think that it's actually a migraine condition that they're living with. But as a matter of fact, it's one of these functional neurological disorders, which is actually causing the issues.

What can you do about it?

It's something that needs to be diagnosed by a neurologist. Preferably a neurologist that is trained in looking at these functional neurological disorders. I mentioned that the outset, that often these disorders can be stigmatized because basically, people and say to you, "Well, you've got to be making that up. That can't be happening. You can't be having those symptoms. Those symptoms don't make any sense." But I can tell you, they do make sense because your brain is an amazing thing. It will protect you in any way that it possibly can, if it feels that it has to. So going to a very understanding GP, a very understanding neurologist, and the treatment would consist of a combination of physiotherapy, getting your limbs moving, retraining your brain to getting your function back, perhaps a psychology team or a neuropsychologist might be there to educate you about how your brain works and also try some techniques to rewire and wind that system down from a psychological perspective.

We’re not saying that it's a mental illness, but that it may be necessary to retrain your brain to start normalizing the input that's coming in. There are specialist teams out there that do treat these functional neurological disorders. In fact, there is a wonderful team here in Brisbane that I refer patients to if it's out of our realm of being able to help, where they get very good results. If you need a link or a referral or a recommendation, please contact us or send a message, because I can send you their way.

I hope that's been helpful. It's a very confusing condition to explain. Certainly the way that the brain works, we're learning all these sorts of things every single day about how the brain can protect, how the brain is able to play tricks on you to really withdraw you from life so that it can protect you. The reality is, is sometimes the brain gets it dead wrong, and it's all about retraining the brain to get you back to doing the things that you need to do.

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Pain Centres in Your Brain

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 03:42:22 GMT

There is NOT one just one "pain centre" in your brain - in fact, it's very, very complex the way that your brain processes things.

In a crude sense though, it's easiest to split the areas of your brain responsible for pain into two - the emotional side and the physical side.

The physical one is easy to understand - there's a pain and it's localised to an area. One area of the brain is responsible for this.

The emotional pain is a little more subtle... when something very sad happens, that awful feeling you have, even though it's not localised physically to a muscle or joint... is still pain... it's just presenting itself differently (ie tight chest, crying, malaise, etc). A separate area of the brain is responsible for that.

When you have chronic musculoskeletal pain... almost 100% of the time there is a combination of the two put together, to the point where your brain is unable to tell the difference between the two.

Think about it carefully... does your physical pain get worse when stress goes up, when you get an infection or illness... and get better when you are on holidays, exercising or in enjoyable social settings?

If you find your chronic pain behaving like this, then you can attack the physical things all you like, but if there isn't attention paid to the emotional centres of the pain, then things may not improve so fast.

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Dowager's Hump - What is it?

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 05:10:44 GMT

Hunchback. That hump where your back meets your neck.

Some people call it a Dowager's Hump - the proper technical term is Postural Kyphosis.

What is it?

Well for starters, it's important to note that EVERYONE has some degree of "hump" around that area. It's Vertebrae C7... in Latin, that is actually called the Vertebra Prominens.... or "Prominent Vertebra" - because its normal for everyone to have it stick out a little bit.

The visual look of it becomes worse with a forward head posture, and can also be a result of osteoporosis. For others, there are genetic factors that can predispose you to it (does your Mum or Dad also have one?)

It's thought by some that the most common way to prevent it from occurring is to strengthen the muscles around it, thus that you are able to be more upright with your head and trunk.

Others suggest that keeping your bones healthy and strong to prevent osteoporosis later in life (and thus preventing things like compression fractures) also plays a role.

I tend to think that it's a combination of both.

Functionally, it's not the end of the world if you have a "sticky-outy" bit at the top of your spine, provided you are able to do all the things that you are wanting to do, and it's not causing issues like neck pain or headaches/migraines. There are many elite athletes that don't have the best "posture" - which proves that posture may not be that important in getting a task done.

Visually, however, it may be a different story!

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What is the Nocebo Effect?

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 03:26:32 GMT

If you are trying a new treatment or health professional, it's a very big step. I'm often asked by colleagues about how I would speak to a patient who has seen many different health professionals, but has had some very negative experiences.

Unfortunately, sometimes the messages given are not the messages that are heard, by either party.

Pain can be scary, and can inadvertently be made worse by well-intentioned health care professionals.

So, you may have heard of the Placebo Effect before. It's where an inert treatment causes symptomatic improvement, with the power of suggestion or context.

But what is this Nocebo Effect?

Well, it's the exact opposite.

It's where inert treatment causes a worsening of symptoms, with the power of NEGATIVE suggestion or context. Pain gets *worse* from a treatment that has no impact on your body's tissues.

So, if you have had an experience in a clinical setting where:

- you don't feel listened to

- you don't feel comfortable

- you don't quite understand the reason for assessment, the diagnosis or treatment

- the bedside manner isn't great

- you've heard bad things about the clinician or the treatment

- something has reminded you of a previous negative experience

...then its possible that those factors alone can make your symptoms worse!

In other words, the more sure, confident and certain you are of your condition and the environment around you, the more likely you are to symptomatically improve...!

Incredible how the brain works, huh?

Be sure that when you are brave enough to start a new course of treatment with any health care professional, that the language they use *empowers* you to try new things, and that the treatments are aimed towards putting you in control of your management in the long term. (We pride ourselves on this!)

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Whiplash and Related Headaches

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 01:19:40 GMT

A rear-end impact of 10km/h is enough to place enormous stresses onto the neck, causing a Whiplash Injury.

When Whiplash happens, it can sensitise a whole range of different tissue structures - joints, muscles, discs or nerves.

The sooner that things can be treated post accident, the better. But if it has been a while since the accident and things are still not going so well, then things like:

-muscle strength

-nervous system sensitivity

-psychological factors

-sensorimotor training

-pain education

-graded return to activity

...may need to come into play.

Whiplash injuries also commonly cause headache and migraine symptoms to occur.

How does it happen?

The three joints that seem to be most affected are C2-3, C5-6 and C6-7.

C2-3 is the "meeting place" between the top and bottom of your neck, and also happens to be joint most affected when headache and migraine happens.

C5-6 and C6-7 are where a lot of movement happens and the studies have shown cop the brunt of impact in most Whiplash injuries.

If you've been following our page for a while, you'll know that nodding of the head, and lengthening of the bottom of the neck, when combined, helps reduce the likelihood of headache and migraine.

With Whiplash, protective muscle spasm stops these two actions from occurring, because of the impacts on the joints above.

The key with Whiplash Related Headaches is to get the joints moving as best as possible, as soon as possible. The brain then needs to "like" the movement again, and then the muscles around it need to be stronger.

Chronic Whiplash has a number of ways that it can be treated, but it all depends on who you are, your genetics, and your individual circumstances... it's never one-size-fits-all.

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Latest Stunning Research Data for the MedX Back Machine

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 03:41:25 GMT

There is an abundance of older evidence for the MedX Machine, in terms of increasing function and reduction of pain. However, most of the research was completed in the 1990s, and there have been significant advances in our knowledge of back pain since then.

Recently, a study was conducted using the MedX Machine and published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. It specifically studied the impact of using the machine for Lumbar Disc Herniation and Radiculopathy.

The results were stunning.

For 162 out of 168 patients (96.4%), there was a significant reduction of clinical symptoms.

This matches clinically what we see here as well. More often than not, when conservative treatment is indicated, it is very likely to get a result - but in a small amount of cases it doesn't (and just means we need to try something else). It's all about finding the right treatment method for your individual issue.

Those who have known about "how we do things differently" for many years, have asked - "if this works so well, why haven't I heard of this?" The sad reality is that for most new interventions, it takes about 15 years to have enough data to be published to draw firm conclusions and be published, and another 15 years for it to become commonplace.

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Why it is so important to assess the C2-3 Joint with Headaches and Migraines

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 00:27:44 GMT

The C2-3 joint is, as the name suggests, the joint between the second and third vertebrae of your spine. It is really special because it's like a junction point between the top of your neck and the bottom of your neck. So, this joint is the least mobile of all the joints in your neck. Above the joint, at C1-2, is the main joint that spins and moves, and the joint above that is the joint that does most of your nodding. The joints below C2-3 do mostly side bending and the turning.

When there's an issue with headache and/or migraine, invariably what we find is, the joint at C2-3 is the main culprit. The reason why is because it doesn't move as well as the other joints above and below it.

Sometimes, a forward head posture can contribute to the lack of movement. So, things like computer work, looking down, slouching in a chair, can put extra stress through that C2-3 segment and make it a little bit irritated and a little bit angry.

If this occurs on one side or the other, you can get this localized pain, right up sort of in the top corner of your neck. Because of that junction point function, you can have pain that refers up and over your head from C2-3, or it can refer down into your shoulder blade, at the top of your shoulder.

There's also a couple of muscles that attach to C2-3. There are muscles that connect down to your shoulder blade, that hold your head upright. So, it's a very special joint, and when something isn't going quite right with it, whether it be stiff, a bit irritated, a little bit sensitive, then all hell can break loose.

You can get all sorts of different pains; a tension headache at the back of the head, a really explosive, sickening pain that that comes up and over the head or pain behind the eye. This is because of the way that the nerves pass up in through your brain, which can cause symptoms like dizziness, nausea, and then as a result of that, potentially sensitivity to light and/or sound.

The biggest mistake that's made when treating C2-3, at times, is treating only the sides, when really what we want to treat is the front to back. A front to back movement at C2-3 will get it nice and loose, and desensitized, so that your brain doesn't see it as such a big issue anymore. The C2-3 joint is something that we look at on day one with most people with headache and migraine. It's very rare that we wouldn't be looking at that joint on day one.

It seems to be the root of all evil when it comes to tension headaches and migraines. Certainly, getting that segment moving, less sensitive, and then getting the muscles around it stronger, both locally around the joint itself, and then the muscles in your neck and shoulder, seems to do a really, really good job in desensitizing the system. Well enough, so that tension headaches and migraines are a thing of the past.

I hope that's been helpful and useful. If there's any questions, please contact us here and we will get back to you as soon as we can ��

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The little known secret relationship between Breathing and Neck Pain

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 02:29:34 GMT

Did you know there is a little known secret relationship between breathing and neck pain?

We have a lot of people who come to us with neck pain, tight shoulders, a generalized feeling of tightness deep in the neck or other issues with respect to neck pain. It doesn't matter how many massages they get, how much needling, how much manipulation, chiropractic, physio…. It’s just a never-ending pain and tightness that comes through the neck.

This is particularly common for people who feel stressed a lot, are fatigued, always overwhelmed or have a lot of anxiety. Issues that they don’t feel they have control over which causes a constant feeling of tension, especially in the neck.

So, what is it that can we do that w e can do to help this out? Now here's a really important thing about how all this works. It's actually really important to know the anatomy of what goes on really deep inside the neck.

What we are referring to is the scalene muscles. There's three on each side. One in the front, one at the side and one at the back. They are individually called the anterior, middle and posterior scalene. These muscles attach into the first rib and the second rib. The function of those muscles is to tilt your head from side to side. That's why when you stretch, it can kind of feel really nice, just getting a stretch in through one side or the other, but they also have a second function. That second function is to actually help you breathe. To help you get extra air in when you are taking a really deep breath in. Here’s something you can do… If you look in the mirror, take a really deep breath and focus on your neck. You will notice the muscles we are referring to kick in right at the end of the breath to expand the ribcage right out.

Now here's what happens. When you're really stressed, when you've got a lot of pain, when you're under a lot of pressure and there is a lot of pressure going on in your life. What happens is that your body goes through a sort of a fight or flight response. Sometimes, it's there all the time. It’s kind of like you're on edge all the time, and that's what a lot of people with headache and migraine tell me, they feel like that they're on edge.

They're walking on eggshells. It feels like they just can't sit still. Quite often that's because the body's just in a ramped up state of fight or flight. When it's in a state of fight or flight, your body actually forgets how to relax. When it's difficult to relax, you actually breathe differently. You don't naturally realize that you're doing this until you actually start drawing attention to the way that you breathe. So this is why there's so much talk now about mindfulness, as well as concentrating and focusing on your breathing.

Reason being, when you breathe properly, your blood gets oxygenated, your body's able to replenish itself, it's able to heal itself. The biggest thing that happens as a compensating mechanism for people with neck pain and stress is that they start to breathe shallowly. They're not breathing really nicely in through all the parts of their chest. So, when you're breathing shallowly, you're actually breathing in a state of sort of fight or flight, or in a state where you're not relaxed, you're actually using the neck muscles to breathe instead of your big intercostal muscles, your big chest muscles to get outwards and actually start breathing properly.

The cause of some people’s neck pain, is that they're not breathing deeply enough. Their muscles in the neck are overworked, because instead of just working, they are working overtime; to move side to side, to breathe deeply and breathe all the time - every second of every day. As a result, these muscles have a tendency to get very tired and very sore. No matter of poking, rubbing, prodding or anything else can help it to get better. What you need to do is learn how to breathe deeply and calmly in through the nose and out through the mouth.

What you want to do, is to get breathing in through the chest. So a good thing to do, is to put your hands at the side of your chest and use it as a guide to breathe in and out. You're using your hands as a cue to get some air into the lungs and re-teach yourself how to breathe properly. One other secret you can do is to put your tongue at the top of your mouth so that you're breathing in through your nose.

An exercise to do at home, if you're feeling really tight and sore through your neck is to breathe for 10 minutes. Believe it or not, breathe for 10 minutes. In for four seconds, out for four seconds. You don't want to hyperventilate. You don't want to go too fast. You just want to relax and breathe.

Breathing is a really good way just to calm the system down so that when you are doing strength work, when you are moving, when you are doing exercises, it starts to work, and you’ll start to get some improvement.

Often just lying on your back with your knees, bent up and breathing for 10 minutes, nice and slowly, nice and deeply into the lungs, is a really good way to settle down your neck pain. If you have got some neck stiffness or neck tightness that isn't going away – it is highly encouraged to have a look at how you are breathing and start practicing calm, deep breathes. It will take the stress off your neck muscles, and you’ll start to notice change. Less pain, less nervous system sensitivity and less heightened stress levels. It's actually really, really effective.

I hope that's been helpful and useful. If there's any questions, please contact us here and we will get back to you as soon as we can ��

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Could Carpal Tunnel Syndrome be the Wrong Diagnosis?

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:11:27 GMT

One of the most over-diagnosed and wrongly treated conditions out there is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

When office workers and tradespeople get wrist pain or hand pain that has a tingling or burning-like quality to it, it's commonly incorrectly diagnosed as Carpal Tunnel. This can lead to unnecessary treatments like injections, wrist splints or even surgery... and may not relieve the symptoms.

As a matter of fact, there are many other factors that can cause these symptoms to occur... all of them need to be considered before doing anything drastic. And the most common factor missed is the role of the neck.

The nerves and muscles near your neck and shoulder can refer pain down your arm and into your hand. If you have the symptoms in both wrists or hands, the neck is a Prime Suspect.

Always ensure that the neck is, at the very least, assessed for any wrist and hand symptoms. This is especially important if prolonged sitting at a computer seems to aggravate the symptoms.

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How having a strong back can help with pretty much everything

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 02:12:03 GMT

Transcript

"Good morning, Chris, from the Headache and Pain Management Center for your Thursday. And today, I'm talking about something that really excites me and that is getting strong in your back. And not just strong in your back, but pretty much any muscle that is behind you. So your shoulder blades, the back of your neck, all the way down to your lower back, even the glutes and hamstrings. So anything that is behind you that you can't see if you look straight down or look straight ahead, that is something that we need to talk about today. If you're joining us, type in below and say hello, because this is a topic that is very exciting for pretty much all manner of different musculoskeletal conditions and other things as well.

So yes, having strong back muscles, that's really, really, really important. And I'm talking more specifically about the... So I'm sitting on the MedX machine by the way, which is our back strengthening machine. And basically, when we're talking about the muscles behind you, so the muscles of your back, the muscles of your shoulder blades, the muscles at the back of your neck and also the glutes and hamstrings, that is something which is called the posterior chain. Okay. So a lot of exercise physiologists use that phrase, a posterior chain.

Good morning. I can see you there. Type in below and say hello. We're talking about getting strong today and basically when we're talking about that set of muscles. It's getting us to get upright. Okay. So if we look at people that are healthy, people that are strong, people that you look at and you just go, "Man, that person is really just owning life. That person is looking really fit. That person's looking really youthful, looking really just strong." What they're doing is they're basically standing up tall, okay. They're standing in a position where they are upright, they're confident looking. They just look like they own it.

It's really interesting because what we've found is... And evolutionary psychology will tell you this as well. Is that as you stand up taller actually makes you feel confident and more strong. There's a lot of body language talks that talk about that. And there's a whole lot of different complex chemical processes that happen when you feel good or down. And when you're feeling down, it actually brings you forward, actually brings you down into a slumpy tight posture.

If you've ever seen someone who's feeling really down in the dumps, who's feeling a little bit depressed, who's having a bit of a struggle, you notice that their posture just doesn't seem quite right. They're not as upright as they were before. They're not quite as just strong looking. They're not quite as confident looking. Their walking might be a little bit slower, their stride length might be a bit shorter, their speed might be a little bit shorter. And the reason for this, if they're feeling down is because we get into a posture or our muscles get into a pattern where the flection group, so the muscles actually bring you into the fetal position, start to take over more than the muscles that actually get you upright and get you out of that sort of fetal position bent down posture.

Now this can happen not just for psychological reasons but also if we're not as strong as we could be. If we're not ambulant, if we're not doing as much exercise as we could, because when we're sitting a lot we're in a flexed position. So you can see me there, my hips are flexed. My knees are bent. I can probably see it there, but everything is in sort of a flexed bent over posture. Whereas when people are actually upright and they're tall, they're standing upright, their shoulders are back. They're actually getting everything upright. Their neck is in a little bit. They're not out like that. They're upright. Their bum's in, and they're just walking nice and steadily along the walkway.

G'day, it's good to see you there buddy. All the way from Italy, type in and say hello. So yes, you would know absolutely how important it is to be strong in the muscles behind you. So your shoulder blades, your back, your neck, all of these sorts of things. So when we're talking about strength, in this regard, it's really important to have some sort of program with your physio or anyone that's actually treating you for pain, to get strong in the muscles behind you. Because when people are in pain, it's a really complex sort of situation that you find yourself in, in your brain that is.

So, it's looking for... It's overly sensitive to messages of threat, but be they perceived or real, I might add. And basically, we need to give your brain good input to say, "Hey, everything's great. Okay. Everything is strong. I'm confident. There's more safety than there is danger." And one way to do that is actually to get strong. So to give your brain some input and feedback to say, "Hey, look, we're actually going quite well here. My muscles are turned on. I'm standing upright, everything's going great." And the more that you do that, the better it is. And the stronger you are on your back muscles, so your shoulder blades, your lower back, your neck, your glutes, and your hamstrings, you actually stand up straighter just naturally because you're stronger on the back than you are on the front, or you've got the strength at the very least to keep the posture upright. Which reduces the risk of pain, which just makes you more confident, sure, and certain about yourself.

So here at the Headache and Pain Management Center, as I said, we've got this really awesome-looking machine. If I can get it out of the way, there it is. The MedX Lumbar Extension Machine, which is the best machine to actually get low back strength happening. So if you've got low back pain and it's actually causing you to bend forward, which by extension will make you not feel great about yourself because you can't stand up straight, you can't get up, you can't walk well, or you can't run well, you can't do the things you want to do. Then this machine can actually assist in getting your back strength going. So it's actually getting your back stronger so you can stay upright because right at the bottom of your spine if you haven't got those muscles to actually hold you up straight then you're going to slump forward. And all of those things I was just talking about may come into effect.

So it's really important to be strong in your lower back and then our program, if we're to go forward with it, is to strengthen your lower back, strengthen the shoulders, strengthen the glutes, strengthen the hamstrings to get you upright, to go from there. So it's a really important thing to do. All of my team use this machine very regularly to actually keep upright and strong. I know Ryan is a very avid CrossFitter and Deborah does a lot of rock climbing too. So it all helps with all of that. So yes, it's very, very good to use.

If you've got low back pain, if you are someone who's a slumper, a sloucher, someone who doesn't stand up straight or can't stand up straight, get in touch with us. If you are interested in a bit of information about all of this stuff that I'm talking about, I've got a really good booklet about the MedX machine, just type in the phrase MedX into the comments below and I can send that to you if you are interested in what the MedX machine does and how it can help you get upright in your posture, stand up straighter, and feel more confident, sure, and certain about yourself. That's all it is for today. I've got some things to do, actually redoing our website so that'll be up very soon. It's very exciting. And I will talk to you again tomorrow with another Facebook Live video. Cheers and bye for now."

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The number one fear patients have when getting their neck assessed

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 03:38:27 GMT

Transcript

"Today, we're talking about the number one biggest fear that patients have when they get their neck assessed and treated. I'm sure you can guess what that might be. If you can, type in the comments below, but we're going to go through that today, and also the three things that you can do to avoid that fear from coming to fruition. Okay. So, the biggest fear, let's see if you can guess what it is. The biggest fear that people have when they're getting their neck assessed, getting their neck treated, is that they pull up worse. Okay. So they're coming in. They're telling the story. They're getting the treatment. They're wanting to feel better, and all of a sudden, they walk out feeling worse. They feel dizzy. They feel nauseous. They might get a migraine afterwards. Nobody wants that. So today, what I'm talking about are the three things that we can do to mitigate against that.

If you're seeing a healthcare professional, what to actually do to make sure that that does not happen. And of course, if you are one of those people who thinks that their headache or migraine might be coming from their neck, click on the link above, because we may be able to help you out. So, number one, the number one thing that you can do to reduce the fear and anxiety around getting worse, post-treatment, is to ask your health professional, do they treat headaches and migraines on a daily basis? Do they see headaches and migraines every single day? Now, the reason why that this is really important is because, it stands to reason, if you're seeing headache and migraine every single day, it means that they're probably an expert in seeing headache and migraine. Okay. So, they've seen plenty of cases. They know. They would have seen all the ups, all the downs, all the different presentations that happen with a headache and migraine person.

And, basically what we do there is that, if you've got that person who's experienced, that assesses things and can answer your questions very quickly about their experience, about their street cred, what the training of their staff is like, then you can be confident that they actually can get the job done, and can explain to you what the risks are, if things happen, if you've had some bad experiences before. So, that's the first one, ask what the experience is of the people that you are seeing. Okay. Number two. Okay. The second thing that can alleviate your fear when it comes to getting your neck assessed for headaches and migraines. Okay. You want to know is, if the person that you're seeing has a well-rounded world view of how headaches and migraines happen. Okay. So, what I mean by that is, if you go to a health professional, it's obvious that that health professional is going to have a bias towards their way of doing things.

Okay. So, a surgeon is going to want to operate, okay. A homeopath is going to want to give you that funky thing with the drops in the water, which probably is just the placebo. Okay. I chiropractor is going to look at it and try to manipulate your neck. Okay. Physios are obviously going to have a look and use their techniques, whether it's the muscles or the joints, to look at and assess what they are assessing. But the important thing is, is to have a look, when you're talking to that new health professional, that they consider your entire history, okay, what's worked, what hasn't, and what does it mean for your treatment moving forward. So, it's routine for us to see here with our patients that, they've been to a whole myriad of different clinicians, okay. That would be doctors, chiros, other physios, whatever it might be.

So it's really important that that person that you're talking to has a well-rounded understanding of what all of the other treatments can be. Okay. Whether it be medication, acupuncture, all of these sorts of things, and to know and interpret what the results of those former treatments might be. Okay. Because what it means is that, when you can weigh up what's happened in the past, is you can make an excellent risk-based decision about what the treatment needs to be, moving forward. Okay. So, say, for example, you've been to a massage person before, and it's made your neck feel a little bit better, but then it goes back to normal. Then it's a fair bit, it's a good chance actually, that your neck is involved, but perhaps they need to do something more specific or more firm to get the result that you need to on the neck.

Okay. On the flip side, if you've had something like a very fast chiropractic manip, or something where there's been a lot of firm pressure, and you've had a huge flare up afterwards, then the interpretation of that might be, that your system's overly wound up, and therefore, a more gentle approach might be needed. So, unless you've got a well-rounded view of what all the other professions do for headaches and migraines, you can't really make that risk-based decision about what the best treatment might be for you. So, keep that in mind when you're talking to your health professionals, that they know how to interpret what's happened in the past with your other treatments. Now, the third thing to talk about to alleviate your fear and anxiety around getting your neck checked for headache and migraine, is to do one thing on day one, just one. Okay. So, one joint, one direction.

Okay. Now the reason why you do that, is you're looking to do what's called a "treatment direction test". Okay. So when you're treating on day one, see what happens, either immediately post-treatment and in the few days afterwards. Okay. Now, normally what would happen is that things would get better. Okay. If there's no change, then it means you might need to push a little firmer or do a little bit more movement to get the result that you need. Okay. Now, here's a kicker. If by chance, something does get a little bit flared up, a little bit angry or something afterwards, if you do only just one thing. Okay. Instead of manipulating every joint, instead of putting acupuncture needles all through, instead of injecting all the joints, okay. Instead of doing all the things on day one, you don't know what's actually flared it up, if you do too much on day one.

So our policy here, The Headache and Pain Management Center, is to do one thing, and to do that one thing very, very well on one to mitigate that risk. Okay. Because then, if one thing is done, if it gets better, worse, indifferent, or anything in between, we know exactly what we have done. Okay. So, if we amend treatment, if we can do something slightly different next time, it actually gets us closer to what the real cause of the issue might be. Which joint, which direction, which exercise, which technique is going to be the best to get the result that you need to get. So that's a third thing. So to go through those things again. The first thing, find out what the experience is of the person that you're talking to. Okay. So, not just their director, but all of their staff as well. What are they training on? How often are they getting trained?

How often are they seeing headache and migraine patients? The second thing is to make sure that the person that you're talking to has a good well-rounded knowledge of what other professions do for headache and migraine, so that when you tell your story, they're on the same page as you from day one, so that everyone understands what the outcomes have been, so you're not led down a garden path. And of course, the third thing is to look at it in a systemized and processed way. Do one thing at a time, introduce one new variable, measure the result and see what happens, so that we're getting progressive improvement over time with your headaches and migraines. Less headaches, don't last as long, not as intense, less medication, getting back to doing the things that you want to do."

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How the narrative around pain is hijacked by drug companies

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 04:37:30 GMT

Transcript

"Good morning, everyone. Chris from the Headache and Pain Management Center here for your Monday morning. Big weekend over here in Australia with a lot going on on the news. And I thought that today, I was reminded that sometimes, all might not be as it seems when it gets reported on the news.

I thought I'd talk about something that's very close to our heart here at the Headache and Pain Management Center, and that's chronic pain, particularly back pain and how these symptoms and how the management of these is hijacked by drug companies and are hijacked by people with vested interests, making a lot, a lot of money. If you're joining me, type in below and say hello. I'm happy to answer your questions as we go through.

So, yes, as we saw on the weekend, there was a bit going on in the news, and it was a little bit unexpected. People probably didn't see that coming. And the thing is with this is that we're often fed a narrative by our media and our information sources that may be... everybody's saying it, so therefore, it must be true. And unfortunately, sometimes, this narrative can be hijacked by people with vested interests.

When we're talking about pain, the biggest vested interests when it comes to pain and indeed any medical condition is the pharmaceutical industry, so they are the big players. So there's a wonderful book that I read a couple of years ago called Bad Pharma which is written by an author named Ben Goldacre, who talks a lot about how this operates. And basically, a lot of the turnover, in fact, somewhere around 30% of turnover of drug companies is actually done in marketing. It's actually not done in research and development, but rather marketing.

When it comes to pain, what we know about pain from the science is that basically, when pain happens, it's actually a product of the way that your brain is interpreting the signals that are coming in from your environment, and it's an individual experience. Everyone's experience of pain is different. So some are going to have a lot of input going into their system, so I can have quite a large injury or quite a large amount of tissue damage and have a little to no pain. And some people can have a small amount of pain and a small amount of tissue damage and have a large amount of pain.

Now, the way that this is very cleverly marketed by the drug companies is basically looking at treating pain, and having a migraine and headache is even worse, by actually having all of these drugs that have been advertised because they might help. It's actually not dealing with the issues, not dealing with how the pain is actually caused, but rather, giving you symptomatic relief, and what we find as well is, and you would have seen this over the years where drugs that are coming to market, where basically, they're advertised for the wrong reasons.

The biggest thing that's going on in the US at the moment in this regard is what's called the opioid crisis, whereby there is a huge amount of people overdosing and dying, in fact, from opioid medication. Now, we do know that opioid medication is extremely good for dulling pain, so it's very good for dulling acute pain. So having, say, for example, if you know the greenstick in the ambulance or if you've broken an arm or if you're having some kind of very large injury at the very beginning where there's a big gash on your leg or something, it's very common to use an opioid medication on post-surgery just to decrease the pain of that major surgery.

But what happened is that these drugs were being marketed as a panacea for people with chronic non-cancer pain. Now that's a problem because what we now know about chronic non-cancer pain, so pretty much everything that, well, most things are coming through this door anyway, is that codeine opioid medications actually sensitized your system more. So it actually makes your pain worse. It makes your system more sensitive to input, and therefore, it's actually making your pain worse.

When you're taking the medication, yes, you might actually get a hit. Actually, you might feel better for a little while, and then it comes back again. And the problem is that your body starts to crave that hit, and then it causes the pain to come back when you don't have it. So it's actually a rebound type pain rather than the pain that you originally had. So your brain is actually chemically changing when you're on these opioid medications, and it's causing a whole myriad of problems when this happens.

So a lot of fake news that's out there about codeine opioid medications and so on is that they're really good in treating chronic pain. But the matter of fact is that they're not. Actually, they might be good at taking symptoms away, sometimes, but it's actually not great at being able to be a long-term solution for your pain.

There's a few things that are actually taken in the research and what we now know about this is that when it comes to chronic pain, the basic things are actually the best. So reducing the fear and anxiety when it comes to movement, so knowing why your pain is there. Having a plan to know what to do about it when you have the pain, so that can be anything from movement to exercise to understanding how pain works and reminding yourself that everything's okay. Being brave enough to move because a lot of the time moving actually gets rid of pain instead of doing things like doing nothing, so sitting on the couch or staying in bed.

There's a really big misconception out there in the pain community, and you can see it all over Twitter, all over Facebook with these very, very high ranking researchers talking about the epidemic and talking about the crisis when it comes to the treatment of pain. So talking about we need to move the paradigm from looking at passive approaches from medication to actually doing more active things, so taking ownership and taking responsibility of how the pain works and having a plan of attack to actually deal with the pain long-term.

Now, I'm not saying this is easy. I'm not saying that treating pain is an easy thing at all. We know it's not. If someone has had pain for 15, 20 years, we know it's going to take weeks and months of being able to educate, learn how to move again, teach exercises, and get strong for us to get anywhere near tackling what's going on. We know that there's no miracle cure for this. We know that opioid medication is just not the way to go.

So the key thing is for anyone who's in pain is actually educate themselves as about how pain works. So how the signals actually transfer from your body up into your brain, how your brain processes it, and then how you perceive the world going on around you, so that you make sure that you have all of the tools and all the information to know how your pain operates. So you can have the tools, the treatments, and the strategies to be able to get through your daily life and actually get things going really, really nicely.

I hope that's been helpful. Opioid medication is great in some circumstances, but as a long-term adjunct to chronic pain, it isn't. You actually need to do more active things.

If you've got any more questions about how this might work, I know this might be a little bit paradigm shifting for some people. You might not have heard it before. Please stop in below because I really love talking about this stuff, and I'd really love to get to the bottom of your pain problem for you here online, or we can start a conversation in private message, or we can even have a chat over the phone if you wish. Click here to get in contact.

I hope that's been helpful. What was the best part of the video for you? And we will talk again later in the week about another topic when it comes to headache and pain because there is just so much interesting stuff to talk about when it comes to this stuff.

Take care and bye for now."

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The 3 biggest reasons why the neck should be checked for migraines and tension headaches

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:45:26 GMT

Transcript

Good afternoon, Chris Fawcett from The Headache and Pain Management Centre here. Today we are talking about the three biggest reasons why you should have your neck checked if you have migraines and tension headaches. The reason why we're talking about this today is because we've got back in the new year, everyone's back to work. The doctors are all back to work as well and basically we're now getting a lot of phone calls from people with headaches and migraines wondering what the cause of their migraine and headache is and what they can do to fix it.

I thought today we'd share what the three biggest reasons why you should have your neck checked for your headaches and migraines. The first one is a common one. The first reason is because medication only gives temporary relief. When it comes to medication for headaches and migraines, so whether it be your simple stuff like Panadol or Nurofen or those classes of drugs, even Panadeine, over-the-counter ones, also the stronger guns like Imigran or Zomig or Relpax, the one under the tongue, all of those medications are obviously abortive and can help with headaches and migraines but they don't always fix the cause. In fact, they rarely fix the cause.

It's basically putting chemical band-aid on what's going on there so it's not correcting the cause of the headache or migraines, merely shielding the symptoms. What that means is that basically you're forever taking these medications, you're either taking your big guns or your Panadols or your Nurofens and you become reliant on those medications for your relief, which basically doesn't give you a lot of power over your headaches and migraines.

The second reason that you need to get your neck checked is because one of the other advices that are given very constantly by well-meaning people about headaches and migraines is that lifestyle factors and triggers are the cause and you should correct those lifestyle factors, such as are you drinking enough water? Are you getting enough sleep? Is it red wine that causes it? Is it oranges, bananas or dietary things that are causing your headaches, so just avoid the triggers and everything will be okay.

Problem is though is that the triggers at times are actually the straw that breaks the camel's back, if that makes sense. Hi there, good to see you. It breaks the camel's back, so basically what happens is that you've already got something simmering there in the first place but then your trigger, whether it be dehydration or hormonal stuff even is one of them, food triggers actually tips you over the edge and causing a headache or migraine to happen, so those lifestyle factors aren't always the cause. That's why you need to get the neck checked to have a look at.

The third reason, which is really important, is that people that are really looking for a solution for headache and migraine, basically you'll know that they've been looking for the cause for the last, might be six months, might be six years, might be 15, 20 years like a few patients, but what you find is that if you don't get your neck checked it feels like you're running around in circles.

You go from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist, physio to chiro to acupuncturist, to hitting the therapist, to Reiki, to whatever it is that you want to go for. Psychic healer was another person that I saw someone see. Basically you're going round and round and round in circles trying to work out what the cause is. Now, if you've never had your neck checked before, what's important is that your neck is checked by someone who knows what they're doing, so someone who's been trained specifically to diagnose and treat if your headache or migraine is in fact coming from your neck.

If you do see someone like that, what they'll be able to tell you is one of two things. Firstly, yes, it is your neck, your neck is having an impact so therefore what we can do is help it out and cause the headaches and migraines to become far less burdensome and perhaps your medication will begin to work or you might not even need your medication at all. Secondly, like I had a patient last week where we checked the neck and we treated a couple of times and it wasn't getting any better.

That tells us that the neck is probably not the cause so you can rule the neck out of the equation when that happens. You don't need to go to the merry-go-round of chiropractors, and osteopaths, and orthopods, and people wanting to jab needles into your spine. That's the reason why. If you get it looked at, checked, and really thoroughly assessed, you can stop the merry-go-round, certainly when it comes to the neck, and can get a much easier and much simpler path to getting some relief for you.

I hope that's really helped. If you'd like to know more about what the real cause of what a lot of people's headaches and migraines can be, type in below neck pain cause in the comments. Neck pain cause in the comments, because basically the cause of a lot of headache and migraine is your neck and the reason why it is your neck will be revealed in that document, so neck pain cause underneath in the comments if you're wanting to know a bit more about that.

Hey, I thought that it would just be a short video talking about the three reasons why you should get your neck checked when it comes to your headaches and migraines. I hope you've learned something today. As always, if there's any questions please type in the comments, drop us a line. Like, share, and comment, you know the drill. Thanks very much for joining us once again today and I'll be back again later in the week for something else to talk about. Thanks very much, talk to you soon. Bye for now.

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Occipital Neuralgia - What is it and what could help it out?

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:44:19 GMT

Transcript

Hello, everyone. Chris, from the Headache and Pain Management Center here for your Friday morning. And today, at the request of someone who actually emailed us and typed in the comments a couple of days ago, we're talking about occipital neuralgia, which is a little known but relatively painful condition that you can get and sometimes be diagnosed with when you have head pain. Good day. If you're joining us, type in below, say hello, and feel free to ask a question while we're through and we'll answer it for you. So occipital neuralgia. Now this one is commonly diagnosed with people with a headache type conditions. So it can run up basically at the back of your head. So basically an occipital nerve, okay, is the nerve that runs up both sides at the back of your head, just into your scalp up the back. Okay. Often called the greater occipital nerve.

And basically, what occipital neuralgia is literally a neuralgia meaning pain in the nerve. So it means pains coming from that nerve. Now with occipital neuralgia, it's basically characterized by a sharping, stabbing pain coming out of the back of your head. Sometimes it can feel like a bit of a shoot up the back of your head, like a prickle, that kind of thing, a bit like lightning, that can feel a bit electric. It can be sensitive to just touch the skin around the back of the head as well. Now, I suppose where the question about occipital neuralgia comes is what is it, what can we do to fix it?

And when it comes to occipital neuralgia, like all other types of headache and migraine conditions, they seem to share a common mechanism. The same thing actually causes it. And basically, the reason why that is is because all the nerves that pass from pretty much here, so the top lip, all the way up and over to the back of the neck, so that includes the trigeminal nerve which can come down the side of your head, the occipital nerve that goes up into the back of the skull, but also the nerves from the upper cervical spine, so from C1, C2, sometimes C3 as well on some people, and often the vagus nerve as well which is responsible for your fight or flight response. So all of those nerves all pass through the same area in your brain. So what can happen is that you can have what's called a sensitization of that part of the brain, and basically you can have pain in any or all of those nerves. Okay.

So you can have pain that feels like it's coming from your occipital nerve, like a shooting, stabbing pain that goes up the back of your head. Sometimes both sides, sometimes one side or the other. But the cause can actually be something completely different. Okay. It can actually be coming from your jaw, it can be coming from your neck, or it can be coming from something completely different. So sometimes it can be a little bit confusing to diagnose headache types, whether it be migraine, tension headache, occipital or trigeminal neuralgia, because basically all of the definitions of those things are all coming from symptoms only. Okay. So whether it's a throbbing pain, if it's on one side of your head, if it's a shooting type pain. But it doesn't actually tell us anything about what's causing the pain in the first place. And what I can tell you is that the cause of the pain is a sensitization of that part of the brain where all of those nerves go into. Okay.

So you can have occipital neuralgia type symptoms where it shoots up into the back of the head, can zap, can zing, can cause a sort of a sensitive to touch. But the point that I'm making is that it can be something else that's causing the pain entirely, almost like a referred pain for someone who has, say side occur, like the pain down the back of the leg, when it's actually coming from something happening in the back. So when it comes to occipital neuralgia, it's more of a name. It's a name that describes a whole bunch of symptoms. Okay. So we're shooting, zapping, light pain at the back of the head, but it doesn't necessarily mean the occipital nerve is the cause. It can be something completely different.

And from what we've seen, most of the time it's actually from a joint in the neck, the way the joints moving. And basically the signal from that joint in the neck is being confused by the brain and it's causing it to do something completely different. So instead of just feeling a stiff neck, you win what I like to call the opposite of TattsLotto where it's actually causing zaps and zings at the back of your head instead.

Good day, Mary. Nice to see you there. Thanks for shouting out. So when it comes to occipital neuralgia, what we need to do is if you're not getting relief from the normal things, don't do that. And a lot of the normal treatments, the medical treatments can include injections into the nerve, which is really a kind of severe thing to do. It can be some gentle stretching or movement of the top of the neck to get the nerves sort of gliding through. Or it can be some really strong painkillers and nerve drugs such as Lyrica or Tegretol or things like that, which can be a little bit like throwing a really heavy one ton rock into nailing a nail into the wood or something like that. So it's really too much for what it's worth.

When you've got occipital neuralgia symptoms, what you need to do, since you get your neck checked, you need to get all the things that can sensitize that headache hub, that nerve center in your brain assessed to see if it is actually the occipital nerve that's causing it, or it's just the occipital nerve getting a little bit of a scapegoat. It's the thing that's being blamed when really the actual cause is a lack of movement in the neck or jaw joints.

I hope that's helped. If there's any questions about occipital neuralgia or any other types of headache and more on for that matter, type in underneath. It's good to see that I've got a number of people watching. Good day there. It's good to see you. And type in questions. Like, share, comment below to let us know if there's anything else that you'd like to know and feel free to request anything that you'd like me to talk about, because I'm always happy to talk about any type of headache, migraine or chronic pain condition to help as many people as we can get the relief that they need. I hope you have a really good Friday for the rest of your day and I'll be back again soon. Thanks. Bye for now.

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The little-known relationship between breathing, neck issues and headaches

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:39:34 GMT

Transcript

Good morning, Chris, from a headache and pain management center here for your Wednesday morning. And today we're talking about the little known secret relationship between breathing, neck pain and headaches. And that's really important to know because quite often, you can get some really tight muscles around your neck, around your shoulders, in through here, you try everything and it doesn't appear that anything works. And sometimes it's actually a really simple fix that you can do it yourself at home. So I'm going to share that with you today and all the secrets around that. If you are joining me, tap in below, say hello, and it's good to have you here with us.

So Hey, the introduction to this, basically we see a lot of patients that come in that have had a lot of treatments in the past about their neck. Good morning. It's nice to see you there joining us. We have a lot of people with neck pain, a lot of people with a lot of issues with respect to neck pain, tight shoulders, and just feeling this generalized tightness that feels like it's really deep in through this part of the neck. And it doesn't matter how much massage they get. How much needling, how much manipulation, chiropractic physio, doesn't matter how much they've had. There's just this never ending kind of tightness that can come through the neck, which just doesn't seem to go away.

And this particularly for people who feel like that they're stressed a lot. They feel like there's a lot of fatigue. They feel like they're always overwhelmed. There's a lot of anxiety. It feels like there's a lot of issues that they don't feel like they have control over. It just feels like there's a lot going on and you just tense all the time.

And it doesn't even matter if it's sleeping. It doesn't matter if you're resting a lot. It just feels like it's never, ever able to just let go. A lot of the time, what happens with people is, that they're going, "Well, look, I just need to get a lot of massage. I need to get a lot of..." If someone is digging their thumbs into this part of my shoulder, it's really tight. Digging in a lot into the neck pushing prodding, putting on a heat packs on it, trying to sort this out. And it just never gets better. And we're thinking, well, what is it that can we do that we can do to help this out? Now here's a really important thing about how all this works. It's Actually really important to know the anatomy of what goes on really deep inside the neck, in this kind of area. And there's three muscles in there.

And they're called the scalene muscles. There's three on each side. There's one in the front, one in the sort of at the side and one at the back and the here on the diagram. So you can see them here. They called the anterior middle and posterior scalene. So you've actually got one that comes down the front one in the middle, one at the back. And I don't know if you can see here on the video, but basically it attaches into the top one and to ribs here. So the first rib and the second rib. So there's muscles that connect directly from your neck that go directly down into the rib cage. So right at the top of the rib cage there. So the function of those muscles is to tilt your head from side to side. So it's just sort of bring you from side to side like this.

So that's why when you stretch, it can kind of feel really nice, just getting a stretch in through one side or the other, but they also are muscles that have a second function. And that second function is to actually help you breathe, okay. To help you get extra air in when you're taking a really deep breath in. So if you have a look at me now and have a look at the muscles here in my neck, I'm just turning the top button and done so you can see what it looks like. So if I breathe in really deeply through my chest, okay, so let's watch this now.

You can see right the very end, when I breathe right in, those muscles kick in right at the very end to actually expand the ribcage right out. So it's actually expanding from the bottom here. You can't see at the bottom of the video, but when you actually expand right at the very top of the breath, right when it's really deep, the muscles actually all through here, kick in to expand the chest. So I'll do that one more time. Okay. So nice and easy.

And all of that comes in. Okay. So those muscles around here started kicking right at the very end of the breath. Now here's what happens, when you're really stressed. Okay. When you've got a lot of pain, when you're under a lot of pressure and so stress going on, with a lot of pressure going on in your life. What happens is that your body goes through a sort of a fight or flight response. It goes through a fight or flight response almost, it's kind of this low grade fight or flight response. It's there all the time. Okay. So it's not like you're really relaxed and something nasty happens any kind of up, and then it gets better. Again, it's kind of like you're on edge all the time. And that's what a lot of people with headache and migraine tell me, they feel like that they're on edge.

They're walking on eggshells. It feels like that they just can't escape is just like, it feels like there's bugs in their skin. It feels like they just can't sit still. And quite often that's actually because the body's just in a ramped up state of fight or flight. And when it's in a state of fight or flight, your body actually forgets how to relax. And what it means when it's difficult to relax, is that you actually breathe differently. You don't actually realize that you're doing this until you actually start drawing attention to the way that you breathe. So this is why there's so much talk now about mindfulness breathing deeply and concentrating and focusing on your breathing.

Because when you breathe properly, what happens is that your blood gets oxygenated, your body's able to replenish itself. It's able to heal itself. It's able to do all of these different things to calm you down. And the biggest thing that happens as a compensating mechanism for people with neck pain and stress is that they start to breathe shallowly. Okay. So they're not breathing really nicely in through all the parts of their chest. They actually breathing in just through the top. So if you remember before, when I was doing the breath in, it was right at the very end. Okay. So we'll do it again. You can see all that comes on. Okay. So it all comes on there right at the very end. But if you take a short, sharp breath, you see how that all just pops up.

Okay. So when you're breathing shallowly, when you're actually breathing in a state of sort of fight or flight, or in a state where you're not relaxed, you're actually using these neck muscles in through here to breathe instead of your big intercostal muscles, your big chest muscles to get outwards and actually start breathing properly. So a lot of people that get this neck pain in through here, in through the back here, that doesn't seem to go away. The cause of it can actually be that you're not breathing deeply enough. Okay. So the muscles in through here actually overworked. Because instead of just working, when you're breathing in very deeply, it's actually working when you're just functioning day to day. So these muscles in through here are becoming overworked and that is the cause of your pain. So when you're moving from side to side, that's great, everyone does that.

But if they're using those muscles to move side to side and breathe deeply and breathe all the time because you're breathing every second of every day, these muscles have a tendency to get very tired, very sore. Okay. And no matter of poking prodding or anything else can actually help that to actually get better. What you need to do is actually learn how to breathe deeply and actually calmly breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. I'll just bring this back a little further, so you can see me. So when we've got... Oops, so well, we'll just bring this back up. There we go. Okay. So when you actually got the breath happening, what you want to do, is you want to actually get it breathing in through the chest. Okay. So a good thing to do is to get in through the chest, actually put your hands at the side of your chest there and use that as your guide to breathe in and out.

So you're actually using your hands as a cue to get some air into the lungs and reteach yourself how to breathe properly. One other secret you can do is to put the tongue at the top of your mouth so that you're breathing in through your nose. So we'll do that again.

You can see there, my whole chest wall is opening up and it's actually bringing air into the lungs and then back out again. So it's actually using these muscles of the neck to do it. It's using all the muscles down low to actually get that happen. So an exercise to do at home, if you're feeling really tight and sore through your neck is actually to breathe for 10 minutes. Okay? Believe it or not, breathe for 10 minutes. And the way to do that properly is to get your hands on your chest and breathe into your hands. Okay? In for four seconds, out for four seconds.

You don't want to hyperventilate. You don't want to go too fast. You just want to relax and breathe. Okay? Breathe into your hands, out through your mouth, in through your nose, out through your mouth, into your hands, expanding the lungs and taking the stress off your neck pain. And then we've had a lot of patients where they haven't responded to [inaudible 00:08:54] they haven't responded to these sorts of things. And sometimes breathing is actually a really good way just to calm the system down so that when you are doing the strength work, when you are doing the moving, when you are doing the exercises, it actually starts to work, actually starts to get some improvement. Because let's face it, If you're not breathing properly and you breathe every second of every day, if you're not using all of the muscles of breathing, instead of just the ones up here in your neck, then basically anything that we do with the neck to try to help that out, just isn't going to work.

It's actually taking two steps forward and a step and a half back, if you're not dealing with this sort of stuff. So at home, if you are feeling like you have a little tension through your neck and it's just not getting better with massage or things like that. Often just lying on your back with your knees, bent up and breathing for 10 minutes, nice and slowly, nice and deeply into the lungs, is a really good way to actually settle down at your neck pain. And it's actually a really useful thing to do. If you have got some neck stiffness, neck tightness that isn't going away. If there's any questions about that, please type in below. I hope that's been really helpful and really useful to help that, there is actually a physical reason to start breathing, not just the mental and psychological stuff that people talk about is actually a physical thing.

It takes the stress off your neck here, and it starts to cause some changes. So there's less pain. There's less nervous system sensitivity, less heightened stress levels in there. So it's actually really, really effective. And plus it's a really good way to actually start winding your system down because everyone knows how to breathe. And sometimes it can be diverted to get out of here and head, but certainly breathing is something that's really easy to do. So maybe give that a try at home that can really help things out. Hope that's been useful and I will see you again later in the week for another Facebook live video. Cheers and bye for now.

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When bursitis of the hip or shoulder is diagnosed, this is vital information for the best outcome

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:38:08 GMT

Transcript

People often get diagnosed with bursitis when they come in and present to GPs with either hip pain or shoulder pain. When you get shoulder pain, typically you get shoulder pain in front of the shoulder and one of the more common things that a doctor will ask you to do is to go get an ultrasound. To see what's going on and to see if there's any issues with the tendon or any issues with the bursa.

So, often when the ultrasound results come back, it comes up with a word that says bursitis. Sometimes it says subacromial bursitis. The same as in the hip. If you've got pain right in the edge of your hip, out on the point of your hips. You can't lie on it. It gets really painful after doing any length of walking. Often you can be diagnosed with trochanteric bursitis, because it's talking about where the bursa is. Now, here's the upshot. When it comes to bursas, basically bursas are little sacs of fluid, that reduces friction between the tendon and whatever's underneath. It's usually a bind.

So, what it means to have bursitis, is a bursa that's inflamed. Now here's the thing. When people often get bursitis, one of the biggest mistakes that they make is going to get a cortisone injection. They get a shot into the shoulder or into the hip to make the bursitis feel better and then it helps with the pain.

Here's the problem. What happens is that you get the injection to the bursa and a lot of the time, and I'm talking close to 100% of the time, is the bursa gets better because its been injected with some cortisone and some local anesthetic, so it takes the pain away. But, within a few days and sometimes a week or two, the pain comes back and once again, we've got the same pain as we had before. So, in the front of the shoulder or on the side of the hip.

Typically, is it's two things that are reasoning for why the pain is still persisting. Firstly, it's the activation of trigger points in the muscles of the shoulder and the hip. So, in the shoulder, it's the muscles behind the shoulder blade which are called your rotator cuff and in particular, a muscle called infraspinatus, which is the biggest muscle that moves your shoulder from behind. The second one is a lack of strength in the muscles that are actually moving the hip and shoulder together. For example, if you've got something wrong with your back, say the back muscles aren't as strong as what they should be, the back joints aren't moving as well as they should be, then the load goes through your hips and if you hit muscles that aren't as strong, then it's going to find a way to keep moving. Quite often it's the bursa which cops it, because the bursa is where the tendon joins in and it starts to rub on the binding that's inflamed.

The way to solve that is to get the muscles actually moving nicely again. So, getting rid of those trigger points, bit of massage, trigger point release, often dry needling can do a really good job with that and secondly, getting some good strength work into the muscles in around the hip and shoulder to actually take that stress off the bursa so it's not being inflamed.

We think because it's inflamed, it just needs matching inflammatory source of steroids or cortizone or local anesthetic to actually knock the pain over. But, the fact of the matter is, there’s usually something going on grumbling behind the scenes. Usually that lack of strength in the muscles around the shoulder or the hip, or the trigger points which are actually pulling on the tendon that overlays the bursa, which irritates it and causes that to happen.

So, if you do have bursitis. If you've actually got pain in your shoulder or in your hip, and it's not getting any better and you've been diagnosed with bursitis, the best thing to do is actually to get that checked out, to see what's going on in the adjacent muscles and also the adjacent joints. So, if it's your hip, having your back checked out and if it's your shoulder, getting your neck checked out. You need to treat the muscles and the joints that are all around it to get the pain under control.

I hope this has be useful, and if you would like to ask us a question you can get in contact with us here!

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All about Cluster Headache and Trigeminal Neuralgia

Fri, 07 May 2021 05:03:23 GMT

Transcript

G'day, everybody. Chris from The Headache and Pain Management Centre here for your Thursday. It's day four of National Headache and Migraine Week, and today we're talking about evil cousins called cluster headache and trigeminal neuralgia. If you are joining us, type in below and say hello. Hope you get something out of today. I know it's a bit later than normal, but yes, it's been a very busy day.

So, yes, these two conditions are evil, okay. They often call them suicide headache, which is a very sad thing to say, but the pain is so bad that it's the worst pain imaginable. It's even been researched by this, and it's been proven in the research, people actually say this, that it's the worst pain that a human can experience.

So what are they? So these two conditions are actually what are called trigeminal autonomic cephalgias. That's what they're called. So they're different as opposed to migraines and tension type headaches. They're a special little, how can I put this, category of their own. These particular conditions are really, really nasty, and it's not just the pain, but it's also what comes with it as well.

So with cluster headache, what a cluster headache is, it's basically a knife-like pain going in behind the eye, stabs you, okay. It comes on a straightaway, there's no warning sign. Some people are lucky enough to get maybe a couple of minutes, that know it's coming on, and bang, right in the back of the eye. It feels like a huge stabbing pain.

Now what happens with this, and it's different to other types of headache, is that it actually comes on in clusters. So what you can have is a few months off without having it, and then you actually have them for six to eight weeks, and then they're gone as fast as they came. But through that six to eight weeks, what happens is that you get these headaches for 15 minutes straight, right, six to eight times a day.

So you can be sitting there doing nothing, then all of a sudden, bang, right in the eye, stabbing pain in behind the eye. Runny nose sometimes. You can have a red, puffy eye. Often your eye can droop. You can have a sinus blockage, or sinus running, and at times, it can even go up and over your head, but more often, in behind one eye.

Now these things are really, really painful, and instead of ... you can know that you might have one of these because you actually, instead of wanting to go to bed like a migraine sufferer, what you want to do is hold your head, and pace around, and get angry and frustrated because it's so painful. It's a different part of the brain that actually lights up when this happens. So that's the first thing, so that's cluster headache.

The second one is its baby cousin. Well, it's not really a baby cousin, as much as the evil cousin, because this is really, really nasty as well. It's called trigeminal neuralgia, and what that is, is it's pain that comes down your face, that affects the trigeminal nerve. So it's excruciating pain that comes down the side. It's like a zap or zing. It's really difficult to touch your face, it's so sensitive. Your nose can run. You can't even chew. You can't talk. You can barely even blow your nose.

It's really, really nasty, and if you know someone who's got this, it is evil, and they will tell you all about it. Now this one, this can go on, it can be in spikes, it can shoot, it can just go zap into your face, or it can be constant. We've seen different types of people that have been doing that, that have those conditions in the clinic. They're really, really nasty to get.

Now, the good news is about these two conditions, okay. Now what happens when you usually get treated with this is that you've got really heavy duty medications to take this, brain-bending, mind-altering drugs, often nerve drugs, to try to calm the pain down. But what we're finding is that it's actually all part of the same system that supplies headache, and migraine.

Now, we're not entirely sure why it does this on certain people, why it's not just a neck pain or a certain type of headache or migraine, but it gives you this zapping, shooting, stabbing, eye-running feeling. We're not entirely sure why that is yet, but what we do know, and what the evidence is suggesting, is that it's all to do with that sensitization at the back of the brain, so bottom of the brain, top of the spinal cord, which is the same as other headache and migraine conditions.

The point this is saying that the upper neck can actually cause this to happen. Okay. So you may not have heard this before, but the upper neck can actually shoot pain into the face like I was describing just before. So in behind the eye, into the face, even though it's not directly linked to the neck. So it doesn't hurt in your neck, but it can shoot pain into your eye and into your face.

Now, if you've got cluster headache, if you got trigeminal neuralgia, we know that you've probably been everywhere. You've been to the neurologist. You've had the oxygen treatment. You've had all the heavy duty drugs. If it's not working and you're not happy, then it's really, really important to get your neck checked, because what we often find, if there's a problem with the joint in your neck on the same side as where you're getting your pains [inaudible 00:04:39].

Sorry, we just lost connection there for just a second. But basically, yes, get that checked out. Have your neck checked on the same side, because it is often a joint that is an issue, going and referring the pain into the face and into the eye as well. If you are suffering cluster headache or TN, and you're wanting a bit more information, just type in what you have, either cluster or TN, and that will give us a bit of an idea to send you some information about that, and how it is we might be able to help, and perhaps even start a conversation on the Messenger as well.

I've got a few things to do now. I'm actually here with a meeting that's about to start after hours, but it's been really good joining you once again. Tomorrow what we'll be talking about is the treatment. So the last day of National Headache and Migraine Week, talking about the different treatments that can be offered, which are drug-free and you can do which is not painful, it's not invasive, there's no surgery, but treatments that you can do to help with headache, migraine, cluster headache, TN, and other headache conditions we've spoken about this week.

Hope you're having a good night. Contact us here to see if there is anything we can do to help out. We'll see you then. Bye for now.

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Headache and Migraine Week - Which pain from which joint?

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 04:57:25 GMT

**Which joint causes which pain?**

In this special video produced for National Headache and Migraine Week, Chris explains which joints cause what pains!

Watch the video and click here to find out if we can help

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The top three joints can refer different pains in different ways, and sometimes all three can cause issues simultaneously... sometimes one side, and sometimes on both sides.

And sometimes, it's none of them and it's something else entirely... which is why a full assessment is always needed.

The video explains about the joints involved, how we assess and formulate a treatment plan.

Click here to fill out our questionnaire to see if we are able to help :)

Could your headache or migraine be coming from your neck?

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How persistent pain differs from acute pain, and finally - recognition that not everyone is able to express pain

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 00:51:41 GMT

Pain is usually adaptive - it gets us to change our behaviour. But - when it becomes persistent, it becomes an entirely different beast, affecting lives very negatively. This includes those that cannot communicate.

This is the last video in our series for 'National Pain Week' speaking about the new definition of pain.

Ps ... There's a little bonus for those watching to the end...!

Why adding a simple phrase like 'pain sufferers should be respected' is just so important

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 01:33:52 GMT

The updated definition of pain, at long last, explains the importance of pain both from an individual's perspective and cultural perspective. Chris gets a little emotional here speaking about why this is a long overdue change, and how he sees this improving outcomes for people living with pain.

Hint: it's all about attitude change from those people who are there to help people in pain. People's experience with pain is individual, and the meaning of pain differs from person to person, and culture to culture.

What is the difference between pain, and the signals that warn your body of a problem?

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 00:49:11 GMT

Get ready for your mind to be blown a little bit...

In the past it was thought that pain happened at the place where you feel it. We now know that it's only the signals that are sent from the "danger zone", and the brain then interprets them to give you the pain experience.

Chris explains in the third video of this series why the International Association for the Study of Pain has updated the definition of Pain to reflect this, and what it means for you and other people living with persistent pain.

How psychological and social factors contribute to pain

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 00:34:24 GMT

The new definition of pain has added important details about how psychological and social factors contribute to persistent pain. Chris explains how pain is generated by more than just the biological factors.

Chris talks about the new definition of pain

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 02:22:19 GMT

The International Association for the Study of Pain has changed the definition of Pain, for the first time in 40 years. Find out why it is causing waves through the professions and with patients... it added the word "resembling"... but Chris explains why this is actually entirely justified.

Chris will be doing four more videos this week explaining the implications, and what it means for you and other people living with chronic pain. Hint: he believes it is an excellent step forward.

Weather-Related Headaches and Migraines - could there be more to the picture?

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 06:20:42 GMT

Last week I posted on Facebook asking about Headaches, Migraines and Pain – and their relationship to weather and thunderstorms. To say that it got people talking would be an understatement – it motivated people to share their stories, and the answers were fascinating.

Some people reported barometric pressure changing their headaches and migraines, others were triggered by the wind, and others were only affected with the electrical storms, but not rain. It’s not surprising, given that everyone is individual, that there are many and varied responses to the weather. It doesn’t seem to have a consistent pattern.

The reason I asked the question on Facebook is that a mate of mine sent me a screenshot of a weather website which purports to predict how likely someone is to suffer a headache or migraine on a given day. The scientist in me isn’t convinced on the accuracy of that – but I thought I would ask the people who know best – my audience – what they thought. I thank everyone for their contributions!*

There were a couple of my current and former patients that contributed also on Facebook, and a few more that visited the clinic this week (who saw the post) and reported to my staff and I that they were affected by the weather, too. I asked the question of others, and the weather didn’t make a difference at all to them.

I think I need to add that question about the weather to my list of possible triggers because it seems pretty common!

However, what is interesting is that I have had patients in the past who had definite weather triggers – like getting a migraine when it’s too hot, too humid, or stormy – but since having their neck treated, don’t have that happen anymore.

Not everyone – but a big enough number to warrant asking the question…

“What could be going on here?”

You see, there is increasing evidence that headaches and migraines start in an area of the brain that takes signals in from all different areas – the head, neck, face, jaw, teeth, tongue, ears and the fight/flight system. This area of the brain become very sensitive to changes in any of those areas – including blood pressure of the vessels of the brain, neurochemical changes, or a tightening of muscles or joints.

With the weather – barometric pressure changes may affect sinus pressures or pressure in the inner ear, or the change in temperature or moisture in the skin, and it may set your system off – falsely alerting your brain that there is a problem. Remember, most people don’t get headaches or migraines during a storm, so there is something different going on between those that suffer and those that don’t.

So what might the neck have to do with it all?

In short, the neck might be structure that is sensitising your system in the first place, but the weather is “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” – in other words, your neck primes the system to have a migraine or headache, but the change in weather sets it off.

If the neck is treated, then it is entirely possible that migraines or headaches can be avoided. Sometimes it is ‘just the weather’ that is the issue, but sometimes it’s a symptom, rather than a cause. Getting your neck assessed is the only way to find out.

A good way to tell if your migraine could be neck-related, even if you’re ‘triggered off’ by a storm, is to think about where the pain is in your head. It would stand to reason, that if your headache or migraine is purely pressure- or weather-related, the pain would be on both sides of your head as the pressure is affecting your entire head. If however, your migraine is one-sided, or can swap sides from one migraine to the next, then it may be worth getting your neck looked at as it could well be contributing to the picture.

Of course, if your headache or migraine is on both sides of your head, then it could also be the neck providing the fuel, and the storm merely lights the fuse.

Migraine is a complicated beast – but looking at them from a different angle by considering the role of the neck, even if the neck doesn’t appear on the surface to have any role – may just crack the case and provide the relief you are after.

*Before you go attacking me - yes, I know that a Facebook Poll isn't scientific either... but clearly the answers mean more investigation is required!

Could your Head Pain be coming from your neck?

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Why should I trust a Headache and Pain Clinic for my Sporting Injury?

Sat, 14 Dec 2019 23:52:47 GMT

Our Methods are Redefining Sports Injury Treatment.

A common mental mistake that people make, including many in the medical and allied health professions, is that they treat sports injuries somewhat differently to other pain patients. This is evidenced by the fact that the rate of surgeries, scans and medical inventions (such as injections) appear to be higher in sportspeople than in the community. At the very least, the media reporting around sportspeople undergoing scans or surgery would make it certainly appear that way.

Given this, when you have an injury on the sporting field, you may be tempted to have early scans, injections or visit a surgeon – when in actual fact, there are treatments that are as good as (or better) that are offered.

We treat sportspeople like everyone else. Sportspeople are human, they have work, they have families, and the pain and restriction from their injuries have the same emotional impact as anyone else.

At The Headache and Pain Management Centre, we use only the latest in the research to establish what your main issues are, and develop rehabilitation programs to return you to the playing field faster, and with the least risk of reinjury. We use:

A structured Initial Consultation Process to establish what your goals are, the timeframe in which to reach those goals, and determine how you can best reach those goals while working around your family and work life.
Objective outcome measures to determine what you should be able to do for your given sport, and train towards that – so you know exactly where you need to be in order to reduce reinjury risk
The latest in the neuroscience research to explain why your pain can be great on some days, and not so great on other days
Exercises in the clinic that can be performed in most gyms or homes – so that when you are discharged from treatment, you can keep improving in your own time
Most of all – we explain in very clear and easy-to-understand language why your pain is there, how you work around it, and what needs to be done to help it out.

We work with your coaches, allied health and medical team by providing advice on the medium- and long-term impacts that Pain has on performance, and advise what the best way to move forward is. If you are a part of a semi-professional or elite sporting setup, we do not seek to undermine your team's medical staff, we communicate openly and work with them to ensure the best possible outcome for you and your performance.

Do you have a Sporting Injury that isn't improving?

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Which Athletes have you treated in the Past?

Sat, 14 Dec 2019 23:39:54 GMT

Numerous Athletes from Numerous Sports trust us with their care.

All manner of sports people have visited our clinic and have had great results – from kids and teenagers, to the Masters populations – both male and female. We have treated athletes performing at local, state, national and international level. Some you would immediately recognise. This includes:

Local, State, National and International Cricketers (male and female)
Local, State and National Level AFL Players (male and female)
Local, State and National Level AFL Umpires (male and female)
Competitors in Combat Sports such as MMA and Martial Arts
National Level Volleyballers
Masters athletes from numerous different sports
Golfers
College Scholarship Level Tennis players
Triathletes of all levels
Runners – including marathon and ultramarathon runners
International Touring Dancers, Acrobats and Gymnasts
Local and State level Soccer players (indoor and outdoor)

We’ve probably forgotten some but you get the idea. It doesn’t matter what the sport or activity is – it’s about working out what the best movement patterns are for you and your sport, showing you how to reduce your pain and increase your performance.

Do you have a Sporting Injury that isn't improving?

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What exercises should I do for my neck pain?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:42:27 GMT

The golden rule is that any movement is good movement, and getting strong is key to getting function back.

For the neck, this is no exception. Strength is even more important - even if you may not have thought of the neck as really needing to lift anything heavy – it’s lifting something heavy every minute of every day – your head!

Any exercise that involves increasing your movement gradually, and building strength in your key muscles over time, is generally going to go well for you. In saying that, everyone is different, and some exercises are good for some people, but terrible for others. It’s about finding what is right for you, even if you have failed before.

Big stretches, Little Nods or “just resting it” – does this help or hinder?

If you’re a human being, you probably have either had a sore or stiff neck, or know someone who has. Some people swear by doing really big stretches, like pulling their head down towards their chest or opposite shoulder. Others may have been taught little “nodding” exercises from their physio that may not have worked. Or some people swear that resting it just makes it better.

Common Sense would tell you, that a neck needs to be able to perform all manner of different tasks, from holding your head up sitting at a computer, looking down at a smartphone or Ipad, checking blind spots – and needing to maneovure into cupboards or hard to reach places. It needs to be able to do all of these things – and depending on the person, there will usually be a certain movement or activity that is most provocative.

In some cases – it just hurts no matter what you do.

You see, there is never a one-size-fits-all program that suits everybody. Everybody benefits from movement and strength – because that’s the way that we are built, and designed to function – however the type of movement and exercise is dependent on you, and your specific needs. Here are some considerations:

If you are too stiff, then you need to be taught how to “loosen up” – move freely, with confidence
If you are too “loose” – where things feel unsteady or you have hypermobility – then strength work is going to be better.
If you are in the middle, but you have pain, then finding pain-free movement in any direction is a good start
Ask an expert, who has great knowledge about how pain works, and how necks move normally – to assist you in giving you the best possible program.

Exercise prescription can also be dependent on the structures of the spine as well, particularly if there are genuine issues such as spondylolisthesis (where scans show a sliding of one vertebrae too far forward on another), severe disc protrusions, previous history of cancer or osteoporosis. It’s important to speak to your physiotherapist about this – there are always things you can do, no matter how good or bad you believe your condition to be.

To find out more about our process to prescribe the best treatment plan for you, click here.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

I’ve had surgery on my neck, and I’m still in pain. Can you help me?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:39:20 GMT

You may have learnt the hard way that having surgery doesn’t necessarily mean that your pain goes away.

In fact, it could make it worse. This is unfortunately quite common, and it can leave you lost, wondering what to do next. And who can blame you?

To begin with – we are sorry to hear that you are still in pain after having such a big procedure. Having spinal surgery is not a small decision – and if you are like a lot of patients that we see, you would have expected to be tracking much better than what you are if you are still having symptoms.

When surgery fails to reduce your pain levels – it tells us a fair bit of helpful information… namely - that the thing they operated on has had little to no impact! What it means is that something else is causing the problem. The key for you now, despite the emotional and physical trauma involved with having surgery, is to get educated and work to find out what is really going on.

At times, you may even hear the surgeon say that the surgery was a success – but the pain is still there. This is because what the surgeon classes as a success, and what you do, are different things. They are only looking at the structural work (like the fusion, discectomy or laminectomy for example), whereas the only thing you care about is the pain.

The good news is that if the structural deficits have been dealt with, then we can usually rule that out as a cause of your pain. The obvious exception is there was an issue with surgery itself – which unfortunately can happen. In most cases however, the surgery itself has been very good (fusion, discectomy or laminectomy), so it’s something else that is now making the pain continue.

What causes neck pain after surgery?

There are a couple of reasons why pain persists after surgery.

The first reason is that the surgery didn’t address the cause of the pain in the first place. In the past ten years, the research shows that structural causes don’t always cause the neck pain that is occurring... in fact it's way less than you think. You can read more about that here. What this means, is that while there may have been that severe degeneration or disc protrusion – if you have exactly the same pain as you had before the surgery, then perhaps the wrong thing was treated for the pain you were suffering with.

The second, and probably the most common reason, is that it’s the muscles around the area that are causing the pain now. When you have surgery, the muscles are cut into, and these muscles need to be rehabilitated. It is extremely rare for this to be even discussed by surgeons post-surgery, let alone be properly performed. When muscles aren’t used, they become weak, then as a protective mechanism, the joints stiffen up and don’t want to move – which causes more pain! Getting strong is the key, and we help you do that.

The third reason is that your nervous system is overprotective. If you have had pain for a long time, then your nervous system and brain becomes overly sensitive, meaning that things that shouldn’t cause pain, begin to cause pain. Your system can become so sensitive that sitting for only 10 minutes, or even just thinking about doing a movement, causes the pain to happen! It’s almost like your brain has decided, without your permission, that pain has become “normal”. This does not mean that you are making it up, rather we need to focus on retraining your brain as well as the muscles. There’s more about this here .

How do you help neck pain after surgery?

We have had great success in treating pain for people that have had surgery. By undertaking the most thorough assessments, using objective measurements, and other recognised clinical tests, we are able to diagnose the main causes of your pain issue, and begin addressing them. This gives us the best possible chance to reduce your pain, and get you back to doing the things you want to do.

We have a policy, however, of not making promises we can’t keep – so on day 1 we will give you our estimate of how long treatment should take, what you will need to commit to and so on. We re-assess how things are going at very regular intervals – and we guarantee that if you are not improving in the way we would expect, that we will change the Initial Treatment Plan, or refer you on to someone else who may help.

We offer a vast variety of different treatment methods – you can find out more about them here .

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

What are the different types of Neck Pain that you treat?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:36:41 GMT

We treat all manner of pain, including disc bulges, nerve root compression and irritation, disc degeneration, muscle weakness, whiplash and pre and post-surgical cases.

The key is actually finding out what you can and can’t do, and improving your function, rather than what structures are affected.

We have successfully treated patients suffering neck pain, with the following conditions:

Disc or nerve Issues with the following spinal levels: C2-3, C3-4, C4-5, C5-6, C6-7, C7-T1, and C8 nerve roots

Disc Degeneration
Disc Bulges
Disc Protrusions
Disc Extrusions
Foraminal Stenosis
Nerve Root Compressions
Spondylolisthesis

Atlanto-occipital joint (OC1)
Altanto-axial joint (C1-2)
Osteoarthritis
Facet Joint Arthropathy
Deep Neck Flexor dysfunction
Multifidus Wasting
Non-Specific Neck Pain
Active Trigger Points in the following muscles

Scalenes
Sternocleidomastoid
Levator Scapulae
Suboccipitals
Lower Cervical Extensors and Suboccipitals

Post-Surgery cases, including

Micro-disectomy
Laminectomy
Fusion
Rizotomy
Disc replacement

All of the above can be improved by identifying what the main issues with movement are, strengthening muscles, and finding the best strategies for you to move. The human spine is built strong – at times, it just needs to be retrained.

If you are suffering with any of the conditions above, or are wondering if we may be able to help, contact us for your obligation-free phone call with one of our staff.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

What are the main causes of Neck Pain?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:34:23 GMT

The simplest and most common causes are a lack of strength of the muscles around your neck, and not being able to move the joints that you need to at the time you need to.

There are some patients where it is their nerves (and how they fire) that is the biggest issue. It’s unique to everyone – no two cases are the same.

However, If we are being totally honest, there is no one main cause for all neck pain. It is completely individual to each person, and it’s usually a combination of any number of different things.

In saying that, there is usually one thing that is the primary factor in each person, and the key to the quickest possible recovery is working out what that one thing is. Usually the “one thing” is a physical factor – a muscle, joint or nerve – but incredibly, it can be the fear or anxiety of needing to move, or even social or psychological factors that can contribute just as much. We know it sounds completely crazy, but this is why is it just so important that consulting with someone who knows all about pain and how it works, is just so crucial.

Physical Causes

The simplest and most common causes are a lack of strength of the muscles around your neck, and not being able to move the joints that you need to at the time you need to. There are some patients where it is their nerves (and how they fire) that is the biggest issue. It’s unique to everyone – no two cases are the same.

With respect to the muscles, the most common issues are one of these three things:

Active Trigger Points
Decreased Strength
Direct injury to the muscle

… or sometimes all three… like in a Whiplash injury. The key to rehabilitating a muscle is ensuring it can contract and relax properly, and making them bigger so it can handle increasing loads. They need to be conditioned so that they can do the things that they need to do.

With the joints and nerves, again the key is their ability to move. At times, results from your scans may show “degeneration” or “compression”, but this doesn’t always correlate with pain. The key is to ensure that the joints are able to move freely, and the nerves are able to slide and glide with minimal restriction. Your physiotherapist can expand on this more in your own individual case.

Psycho-social Factors

It is now well established that psychological factors, such as stress, anxiety or depression, can contribute to a pain pattern. Same goes for social factors, such as the inability to work or being involved in difficult family issues. This occurs because after an initial injury, if you do not feel empowered to control your situation, or are given inaccurate or incorrect information, then your nervous system literally changes to become more protective than it needs to be.

In a practical sense, it means that your mood changes, fatigue increases, and you just “don’t feel like doing anything”, or “I’m too afraid to do things in case I hurt myself again”. This is more likely to continue when you don’t have the correct information to get your individual pain problem under control.

The key to working out what the major cause of your neck pain is having a very thorough Assessment. An assessment which lasts for an hour or more, allows you to tell your pain story, and gives ample time to assess all of the things that need to be assessed – physical and non-physical. The Headache and Pain Management Centre structures the first assessment so you walk out knowing what is going on, what the plan needs to be to get the quickest improvement, and gives you the time to ask all the questions you need to.

To find out more about our Initial Consultation, and our treatment methods, click here.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

What are the treatment methods you use to treat Neck Pain?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:33:02 GMT

A combination of different treatment methods are used, which are selected according to your needs.

We implement strategies such as muscle releases and strengthening, joint mobilisation, dry needling and pain education.

The treatment methods we employ for neck pain are many, and varied – and depend solely on you and your pain condition. We have a policy of assessing and diagnosing first, before offering a specific type of treatment. In fact, it is totally irresponsible to offer any manual treatment (apart from the most basic of strength or movement training) before assessing things fully.

After we have assessed your neck, a combination of different treatment methods are used, which are selected according to your needs. We implement a number of different strategies, which you can read about below.

Joint Mobilisation and movement

We provide specific hands-on treatment to get things starting to move and be comfortable again, while at the same time reducing your pain. The first few sessions of a treatment plan typically involve quite a lot of hands-on treatment and joint movement retraining – but the goal is not to become reliant on it. We use hands on joint mobilisation to restart the movement process, then teach you how to self-manage for the future.

Trigger Point Massage and Dry Needling

Tender points that feel really “knotted” and “tight” to the touch can refer pain to all manner of different areas – including the arm, neck, face and head. In order to wind down the sensitivity of these areas, we use certain hands-on techniques and dry needling to begin that process. It is amazing how often these points are the hidden cause of your pain! The key to this is ensuring accuracy of the treated area – no really firm pressure or being a human pin-cushion – when the treatment is directed to the right area for the right purpose, the results follow.

Strength Retraining

When movement is restored and your pain system wound down enough, then strength training is an absolute necessity to treat Neck Pain. When you combine the use of our specific neck exercises with a tailored program for your shoulder blades, back, and arms, it means that movement remains easy, and the risk of recurrence of pain drops dramatically. As you age, and especially over 40, muscle mass decreases even in people without pain, so it’s very important to make regular strength training a part of your regular routine, no matter your age or level of activity.

Pain Education and Brain Retraining

The latest in pain research shows that biological, psychological and social factors can all contribute to your lived pain experience. The most common thing stopping neck pain sufferers from moving is actually the fear of movement, and what might happen if you “move the wrong way”. Most of the time, the fears are totally unfounded – and quite often start with poor advice or information that you received from your health professional, family or friends.

With some patients, before we treat hands-on, it is necessary to allay those fears first before beginning treatment, so that you and your nervous system have the confidence to allow your neck to move, and reduce the risk of flare up. We spend longer sessions with these patients (at no extra cost) so that you are able to fully understand and comprehend how your specific pain works.

To find out more about how your back pain can be helped, send us a message here .

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Which muscles are most responsible for Neck Pain?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:31:44 GMT

Almost everyone has a tight neck from time to time.

We all know the drill – getting stuck into the tops of your shoulders with your hands and fingers, poking that fleshy bit under your skull… sometimes it can feel like little pea-sized knots! But which muscles specifically are they?

The neck is an incredibly complex but special area when it comes to the muscles – the muscles in your neck are not just responsible for movement, but also responsible for aligning your head in space, holding your head upright, protecting important blood vessels and allowing you to hold postures for long periods. They work really hard!

Below are a few muscles that are most affected when you have neck pain.

Scalenes

These muscles are very important because of where they attach – they connect the middle and bottom of your neck to your rib cage. They are the prime movers of your neck when tilting your head from side to side, act a little bit when you are turning your head, and also help when you are breathing. These muscles are usually responsible for pain when you feel “stressed” and “tense” – that feeling that the tops of your shoulders “feel like rocks” – because when you are stressed and tense – you use only the top parts of your lungs, and uses you neck muscles to breathe when it really should be only the chest muscles and diaphragm.

These pesky muscles can refer pain in the side of your neck, into your shoulder blade and down the arm – and can even cause irritation of nerves going down into your shoulder and arm. These are very important.

Sternocleidomastoid

These muscles are the big straps that run down the front of your neck, and when working together they bend your head forward, and working on their own can tilt or rotate your head up or down. They attach from behind your ears, down into your sternum (breastbone) and collarbone.

The “SCM’s” (as you may have heard them called) are crucial in also aligning your head in space, and giving important feedback to your brain about movement. When these muscles get tight and overworked, it is common for headaches and dizziness to occur.

Upper Trapezius

The “Upper Traps” are the tops of the shoulders, and lie over the top of the scalenes and the other neck muscles – they are muscles you feel immediately under the skin. These act to shrug your shoulders upwards, and also commonly tense up when you are stressed or sitting for a long time. These muscles have a nerve connection directly into your brainstem – and can be implicated in headache and migraine conditions.

Levator Scapulae

This muscle is most widely known for that knot that you get just at the top of your shoulder blade – when your “shoulder blades feel like rocks”. This muscle connects from the shoulder blade up into the top of the neck – and therefore can have an impact on all manner of different movements. It can stop rotation of the neck, restrict your ability to reach up towards the ceiling or put your hand behind your back – sometimes all at once. Because it attaches to the top of the neck, it can have an impact on headaches as well – especially any headaches that occur on one side of the head.

Multifidus

They are the muscles that attach in and around your spine. They are the deepest layer of muscles and work together with your other lower cervical extensor muscles to keep your head upright when you are sitting or standing. When people have long term neck pain which is very local to the neck, it likely these muscles are involved. These muscles are the muscles that have the most benefit when you perform dry needling, or when doing a specific neck strengthening program.

With acute neck pain – it is quite common it is only one or two muscles involved, but when things become chronic – there are changes to all the muscles from normal.

By undertaking the most thorough assessments, using objective measurements, our MedX Lumbar Extension Machine and other recognised clinical tests, we are able to diagnose if the muscles are the main causes of your pain issue, and begin addressing them. This gives us the best possible chance to reduce your pain, and get you back to doing the things you want to do.

We offer a vast variety of different treatment methods to rehabilitate muscles – you can find out more about them here .

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

I had a Whiplash injury a number of years ago, and things are still not great after all this time. Can I be helped?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:16:21 GMT

The golden rule is that any movement is good movement, and getting strong is key to getting function back.

I had a Whiplash injury a number of years ago, and things are still not great after all this time. Can I be helped?

In most cases, yes you can see improvement.

Whiplash, as you would be well aware, can persist for quite a long time post injury – whether it be from a car accident, a fall, or a sports injury. There is now 20 years’ worth of solid research into the topic, and there are real inroads being made.

If there hasn’t been substantial improvement, then it is important to understand the reasons why it could be. With any chronic pain, whiplash being no exception, there is very rarely just one reason why the pain is still there – because lets face it – if it were a simple, one-issue problem, it probably would have been fixed by now!

The reason that pain persists after so long, is usually because of a lack of muscle strength, an overactive nervous system, moving the wrong way, or sometimes even the fear and anxiety associated with the risk of further damage. Often it’s a combination of all of them put together.

There may even be other reasons, that haven’t even been discovered yet. After all – the brain is the world’s most complex machine… we’re only just beginning to scratch the surface of it.

You may think that this is bad news – and that it all sounds really complicated… but really it isn’t. The key to improvement is finding the things that are restricted – be it a specific movement, muscle strength or functional activity – and improve those things, one step at a time. This is true, regardless of what label you want to put on things.

Our way of doing things means that on Day One – we find out what is most important to you, what you want to achieve from visiting us, and moving towards your targets, set by you. Honestly, we really don’t care what insurers, Workcover or your family think – we only care about you.

With more new information being found, more treatment options are always presenting – and we keep right up-to-date with it.

I’ve got a lot of damage on my neck scans, will you be able to help that and is it safe?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:12:23 GMT

This is a loaded question – because the answer depends on the specific question that you are asking... and this is where a lot of confusion begins! So we’ll answer both of these questions:

Will treatment help the damage on the scans?
Will treatment help the pain that I am in?

What can be said from the outset, is that all things considered, treatment is very safe – we consider your scans very carefully, and the behaviour of your pain, and prescribe only the most appropriate treatment. With neck pain, because of the very important ligaments and blood vessels that run through the area, we undertake a few safety checks and explain the (very small!) risks before treatment begins.

What is important to know, is that the latest research shows that what shows up on the scans, and the location and intensity of your pain, quite often don’t match up. For example, you can have quite severe changes on your scans but have no pain, or have excruciating pain but no changes outside the ordinary. It is very common to have a Car Accident and suffer “Whiplash”, and yet when an XRay, CT or MRI is performed, that the report is “normal”, or shows only “minor” issues.

What does the damage on my scans mean?

In practical terms, most of the time, the changes on your scans are considered normal and nothing to worry about. The Table below describes the prevalence of changes on scans on people that do not have neck pain.

As you can see, most of the changes on scans are age-related – which means they are a normal part of the aging process, and doesn’t mean that pain happens as a direct result of those changes. So what’s actually going on?

Pain and Tissue Damage are not related.

At The Headache and Pain Management Centre, we are experts in is the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of pain. Let’s face it – if you weren’t in pain, would you care too much about what’s on the scans? My guess is probably not, and nor should you.

We assess all of the causes of pain – and admittedly, there are often times where changes on scans do directly correlate with the pain that you are experiencing – and this is why your scan results must be interpreted in conjunction with the symptoms you are presenting with. There could be quite severe facet joint degeneration on your right side, but your pain is on the left side… therefore no relation at all!

Will treatment help the damage on the scans?

The research shows that with more movement, exercise and strength, it is indeed possible that disc bulges can be resolved. In fact, some disc changes can resolve on their own without treatment. Again, the point is this – if you’re in pain, you shouldn’t be asking whether treatment will fix the damage on the scans, you should be asking…

Will treatment help the pain?

….And that’s what we are here for. By undertaking the most thorough assessments, using objective measurements, our huge experience in identifying issues and other recognised clinical tests, we are able to diagnose the main causes of your pain issue, and begin addressing them. This gives us the best possible chance to reduce your pain, and get you back to doing the things you want to do.

We have a policy, however, of not making promises we can’t keep – so on day 1 we will give you our estimate of how long treatment should take, what you will need to commit to and so on. We re-assess how things are going at very regular intervals – and we guarantee that if you are not improving in the way we would expect, that we will change the Initial Treatment Plan, or refer you on to someone else who may help.

We offer a vast variety of different treatment methods – you can find out more about them here.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Chronic Pain and Weird Symptoms - how do they relate to each other?

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 05:32:37 GMT

Nausea, shivering, sweating and dizziness... what do they all have in common?

I keep hearing that the pain is “all in my brain”. What does that mean?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 02:18:38 GMT

If you have been following the latest in the research, reading feature articles in magazines or newspapers, or hearing things on Social Media (especially our page here!) – you may have heard the phrase that “pain is all in the brain”.

If you aren’t aware of what is meant by this phrase, you could be tempted to automatically switch off and not pay attention – because it can accidentally be taken to be provocative, offensive, and cruel. However, nothing could be further from the truth. And understanding this point could literally change your entire life.

The difference between “all in your head” and “all in your brain”.

The English Language can be a brutal beast – heaps of double meanings, words that are unclear, and can be dependent on the person using the words, and the person hearing them. Really confusing stuff!

If you have suffered chronic pain, headaches, migraines, back pain, whiplash – in fact any “invisible illness” that people can’t see – then chances are you have been told that “it’s all in your head”. When uneducated friends and family, or ignorant health professionals use this language, it can be taken to mean that they believe you are making your symptoms up. This is not only offensive, but it does real damage to the lives of people in chronic pain.

You may not know this, and it will probably sound a little “out there” – but, every single experience you have, every taste, touch, sound, feeling, emotion, thought and body response – is 100% controlled by your brain. What you experience as a living, breathing human is what your brain is showing you to experience. Pretty heavy stuff, and there are many books devoted to this topic – such as The Brain that Changes Itself. In short, the feelings you have and the sensations you feel, are actually products of what your brain is telling you at that point in time.

If you’re like most people, you have probably had a situation in the past where you have had a paper cut – small injury but boy does it hurt! And by the same token, you have probably been in a garden doing some yardwork, only to realise about half an hour later that you have a scratch on your arm or leg that is quite big, sometimes bleeding, and you didn’t know about it until you saw it in the mirror. There was no pain at all! The amount of tissue damage you have, is not proportional to the pain that you feel.

So when you hear “your pain is in your brain” – what they mean is that your brain is amplifying signals coming from your body way too much, such that your body perceives something that is totally safe – like sitting in a chair, or bending forward – as very dangerous. Things become more sensitive than normal.

So when you hear “your pain is in your brain”, it doesn’t mean that you are making it up – your pain is 100% real. What it means is that the signals coming from your muscles, joints and nerves of your back, is being interpreted by your brain as being really dangerous, rather than being normal. The new Pain Neuroscience discoveries are reshaping our knowledge of how back pain works, and there have been some amazing leaps forward recently.

We now know that at times, purely physical things like massage, mobilisations and manipulations, and at times even physical exercise, might not be enough to reduce your pain to the point where you can function properly. What’s needed in this case, is to retrain the brain – using very special techniques to rewire the signals. This could involve teaching you about how it all works to reduce anxiety, imaginary movements to trick your brain into moving again (think of how much mental preparation an elite sportsperson does – same thing!), and some even more weird and wonderful things too.

There have been cases come through our clinic, for low back pain, migraines, headache and whiplash, where “hands-on” physio has not been needed to get recovery.

I’ve got a lot of damage on my scans; will you be able to help that and is it safe?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 02:16:50 GMT

This is a loaded question – because the answer depends on the specific question that you are asking... and this is where a lot of confusion begins! So we’ll answer both of these questions:

Will treatment help the damage on the scans?
Will treatment help the pain that I am in?

What is important to know, however, is that the latest research shows that what shows up on the scans, and the location and intensity of your pain, quite often don’t match up. For example, you can have quite severe changes on your scans but have no pain, or have excruciating pain but no changes outside the ordinary.

What does the damage on my scans mean?

Pain and Tissue Damage are not related

What we are experts in at The Headache and Pain Management Centre is the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of pain. Let’s face it – if you weren’t in pain, would you care too much about what’s on the scans? My guess is probably not, and nor should you.

We assess all of the causes of pain – and admittedly, there are often times where changes on scans do directly correlate with the pain that you are experiencing – and this is why your scan results must be interpreted in conjunction with the symptoms you are presenting with. There could be quite severe facet joint degeneration on your left side, but your pain is on the right side… therefore no relation at all!

Will treatment help the damage on the scans?

Will treatment help the pain?

….And that’s what we are here for. By undertaking the most thorough assessments, using objective measurements, our MedX Lumbar Extension Machine and other recognised clinical tests, we are able to diagnose the main causes of your pain issue, and begin addressing them. This gives us the best possible chance to reduce your pain, and get you back to doing the things you want to do.

We have a policy, however, of not making promises we can’t keep – so on day 1 we will give you our estimate of how long treatment should take, what you will need to commit to and so on. We re-assess how things are going at very regular intervals – and we guarantee that if you are not improving in the way we would expect, that we will change the Initial Treatment Plan, or refer you on to someone else who may help.

We offer a vast variety of different treatment methods – you can find out more about them here.

I’ve had surgery on my back, and I’m still in pain. Can you help me?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 02:11:48 GMT

To begin with – we are sorry to hear that you are still in pain after having such a big procedure.

Having spinal surgery is not a small decision – and if you are like a lot of patients that we see, you would have expected to be tracking much better than what you are if you are still having symptoms.

What causes back pain after surgery?

There are a couple of reasons why pain persists after surgery.

The first reason is that the surgery didn’t address the cause of the pain in the first place. In the past ten years, the research shows that structural causes don’t often cause the back pain that is occurring. You can read more about that here. What this means, is that while there may have been that severe degeneration or disc protrusion – if you have exactly the same pain as you had before the surgery, then perhaps the wrong thing was treated for the pain you were suffering with.

How do you help back pain after surgery?

We have had great success in treating pain for people that have had surgery. By undertaking the most thorough assessments, using objective measurements, our MedX Lumbar Extension Machine and other recognised clinical tests, we are able to diagnose the main causes of your pain issue, and begin addressing them. This gives us the best possible chance to reduce your pain, and get you back to doing the things you want to do.

We have a policy, however, of not making promises we can’t keep – so on day 1 we will give you our estimate of how long treatment should take, what you will need to commit to and so on. We re-assess how things are going at very regular intervals – and we guarantee that if you are not improving in the way we would expect, that we will change the Initial Treatment Plan, or refer you on to someone else who may help.

We offer a vast variety of different treatment methods – you can find out more about them here .

Could your Back Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

I’ve seen other physios, chiros and other professionals before. How will this be different?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 02:09:36 GMT

One of the most common things we hear from patients who have suffered with long-term back pain is the question above. And to be honest, we completely and totally understand.

Before I talk about our differences, I want to promise you these things:

We will not lead you down an exact path that you have tried before and failed.
We will offer you different treatment to anything else that you have tried.
We will not offer you treatment if we do not believe we can help you achieve the goal you want to achieve.
We will send you elsewhere if we know the precise person that you should see for your pain problem.

Our differences are three-fold – we have the only MedX Lumbar Extension Machine in Brisbane (find out about this here ), we use the best and most updated knowledge in Pain Neuroscience (find out about this here ), and most importantly, we treat according to an individual treatment plan – which can be updated as your symptoms change.

The Treatment Plan – our most important difference

While we have the widest variety of different treatment tools to assist with your pain, including the MedX and MCU Machines, Dry Needling, Spray and Stretch Trigger Point Releases – our biggest and most important difference is the way in which we treat. We do not treat session to session, we put together an entire treatment plan and expect our patients to agree to its implementation before we begin.

You see, the success of any course of treatment is dependent on two things:

The willingness of you to change something to get your pain under control, and
The strength of the plan to take you forward to where you want to go.

The biggest frustration we hear from our patients on day one, is that the other practitioners that they have seen have made statements that promised a “quick fix”, or “total cure”. With something as (at times!) complex as low back pain, we have learnt that in order to retain the trust of our patients, provide the best information to our referrers, and get the best possible results, we need to do these important things:

Do not make promises we can’t keep
Provide a full diagnosis of what we believe the issue to be, and explain it fully to you
Provide a full treatment plan entailing:

The treatment techniques used in the treatment room through the course of treatment, and explain why we are using them
The exercise regimen that you will be required to follow at home to ensure the best result
The expected number of appointments that it is going to take
The expected timeframe, in total, we expect it will take in order to get the results you are after.

Formally reassess how things are going frequently – this usually occurs after the 7th session, but sometimes as early as the 4th session if it is a complex case. This allows us the time required for you to complete your exercise regimen, and give a real idea of how things are travelling. We do not expect total resolution of any back pain condition before that time -that is just a reality! Anyone telling you otherwise is, in all honestly, being disingenuous.

Our difference is in the diagnosis and the method that we treat, rather than the treatment tools themselves. The biggest mistake that a lot of other professionals make, and a mindset error that some patients make as well, as to “try a tool” and see if it works, rather than having a diagnosis first. Logically, you can’t do anything unless you have some idea of what is going on, and even if what’s going on isn’t clear, then having the safety blanket of frequent, formal re-assessments will offset that risk.

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What are the different types of back pain that you treat?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 02:05:41 GMT

We treat all manner of back pain, including from disc bulges, nerve root compression and irritation, disc degeneration, muscle weakness, core instability and pre and post-surgical cases.

The key is actually finding out what you can and can’t do, and improving your function, rather than what structures are affected.

We have successfully treated patients suffering low back pain, with the following conditions:

Disc or nerve Issues with the following spinal levels: T12-L1, L1-2, L2-3, L3-4, L4-5, L5-S1

Disc Degeneration
Disc Bulges
Disc Protrusions
Disc Extrusions
Foraminal Stenosis
Nerve Root Compressions
Spondylolisthesis

Osteoarthritis
Facet Joint Arthropathy
SIJ dysfunction
Multifidus Wasting
Non-Specific Low Back Pain
Active Trigger Points in the following muscles

Quadratus Lumborum
Psoas Major
Iliopsoas
Gluteus Maximus, Medius or Minimus

Piriformis Syndrome
Post-Surgery cases, including

Micro-disectomy
Laminectomy
Fusion
Rizotomy
Disc replacement

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What are the main causes of Low Back Pain?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 01:34:32 GMT

If we are being totally honest, there is no one main cause for all back pain. It is completely individual to each person, and it’s usually a combination of any number of different things.

Physical Causes

The simplest and most common causes are a lack of strength of the muscles around your lower back, and not being able to move the joints that you need to at the time you need to. There are some patients where it is their nerves (and how they fire) that is the biggest issue. It’s unique to everyone – no two cases are the same.

With respect to the muscles, the most common issues are one of these three things:

Active Trigger Points
Decreased Strength
Direct injury to the muscle

… or sometimes all three. The key to rehabilitating a muscle is ensuring it can contract and relax properly, and making them bigger so it can handle increasing loads. They need to be conditioned so that they can do the things that they need to do.

Psychosocial Factors

The key to working out what the main cause of your low back pain is having a very thorough Assessment. An assessment which lasts for an hour or more, allows you to tell your pain story, and gives ample time to assess all of the things that need to be assessed – physical and non-physical. The Headache and Pain Management Centre structures the first assessment so you walk out knowing what is going on, what the plan needs to be to get the quickest improvement, and gives you the time to ask all the questions you need to.

To find out more about our Initial Consultation, and our treatment methods, click here .

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What are the treatment methods you use to treat Low Back Pain?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 01:09:52 GMT

The treatment methods we employ for low back pain are many, and varied – and depend solely on you and your pain condition.

We have a policy of assessing and diagnosing first, before offering a specific type of treatment. In fact, it is totally irresponsible to offer any manual treatment (apart from the most basic of strength or movement training) before assessing things fully.

After we have assessed your low back, a combination of different treatment methods are used, which are selected according to your needs. We implement a number of different strategies, which you can read about below.

The MedX Medical Lumbar Extension Machine

This is the “jewel in the crown” when it comes to treating low back pain. This machine is able to isolate the back muscles, and strengthen them better than anything else. We have created a page dedicated to this wonderfully effective piece of equipment here.

Joint Mobilisation and Movement

We provide specific hands-on treatment to get things starting to move again, while at the same time reducing your pain. The first few sessions of a treatment plan typically involve quite a lot of hands-on treatment and joint movement retraining – but the goal is not to become reliant on it. We use hands on joint mobilisation to restart the movement process, then teach you how to self-manage for the future.

Trigger Point Massage and Dry Needling

Tender points that feel really “knotted” and “tight” to the touch can refer pain to all manner of different areas. In order to wind down the sensitivity of these areas, we use certain hands-on techniques and dry needling to begin that process. It is amazing how often these points are the hidden cause of your pain! The key to this is ensuring accuracy of the treated area – no really firm pressure or being a human pin-cushion – when the treatment is directed to the right area for the right purpose, the results follow.

Strength Retraining

When movement is restored and your pain system wound down enough, then strength training is an absolute necessity to treat Low Back Pain. When you combine the use of the MedX Machine with a tailored program for your hips, abdominals, legs and shoulders, it means that movement remains easy, and the risk of recurrence of pain drops dramatically. As you age, muscle mass decreases even in people without pain, so it’s very important to make regular strength training a part of your regular routine, no matter your age or level of activity.

Pain Education and Brain Retraining.

The latest in pain research shows that biological, psychological and social factors can all contribute to your lived pain experience. The most common thing stopping low back pain sufferers from moving is actually the fear of movement, and what might happen if you “move the wrong way”. Most of the time, the fears are totally unfounded – and quite often start with poor advice or information that you received from your health professional, family or friends.

With some patients, before we treat hands-on, it is necessary to allay those fears first before beginning treatment, so that you and your nervous system have the confidence to allow your back to move, and reduce the risk of flare up. We spend longer sessions with these patients (at no extra cost) so that you are able to fully understand and comprehend how your specific pain works.

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What exercises should I do for my back pain?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:50:37 GMT

The golden rule is that all movement is good movement, and getting strong is key to getting function back.

Pilates, Core Strength, Tightening the Tummy – essential for reducing back pain, or myth?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 20 years, you will have heard about Pilates, Yoga, tightening the core and so on. It was assumed for quite some time, that you needed to “tighten the core” in order to get relief from back pain. However, with more very high quality research coming out about how the muscles actually work, and how pain works, this is not always the cases – in fact, rarely is it the case.

Common Sense would tell you, that if you use a muscle while you are still – say for example when you are performing a “plank” – then you are training that muscle to be used when you are still. So then, what happens when you need to move?

By the same token, if the muscles around your back and abdomen are already too tight, or what we call “overactive”, then why would we want to tighten the muscles more?

If you are too stiff, then you need to be taught how to “loosen up” – move freely, with confidence
If you are too “loose” – where things feel unsteady or you have hypermobility – then strength work is going to be better.
If you are in the middle, but you have pain, then finding pain-free movement in any direction is a good start
Ask an expert, who has great knowledge about how pain works, and how backs move normally – to assist you in giving you the best possible program.

To find out more about our process to prescribe the best treatment plan for you, click here .

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What is the MedX Lumbar Extension Machine?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:28:04 GMT

The MedX Medical Lumbar Extension Machine is a special piece of equipment that measures how strong the muscles of your back are, and a gym machine that builds the muscles of your lower back. Research shows that it is the best, safest and most effective way to measure and build back strength.

What is the MedX Machine?

The MedX machine is an exercise machine which strengthens your back extensor muscles in a safe and isolated way. This has been shown to significantly reduce the level of pain in the lower back.

Using state-of-the-art technology, it measures the amount of force that your back muscles alone are able to generate, and uses that data to tailor a strengthening program in a safe and effective way.

The MedX Machine allows patients to achieve progressive strengthening of their back muscles, as the weight and amount of movement can be gradually increased with each session.

Who is it suitable for?

The MedX machine is suitable for anyone with spinal pain. The research shows that when people suffer from back pain, the deep muscles of the back shut themselves off – as a protective measure – in response.

Over time it has been shown that the muscles decrease in size and become fatty (see the picture below), and as a result lose strength. This in itself can further contribute to the pain, and the cycle goes on.

The MedX machine targets the precise muscles that are “shut off” by the pain – regardless of why the pain started in the first place. The MedX, in a quick amount of time, reverses these changes within the muscles and assists their recovery to their normal size and function. When the muscles have increased in size, the pain reduces as it is now easier to move and support your lower back. This makes anyone with any type of spinal pain a good candidate for the MedX machine.

We have created a resource especially for those who wish to learn more about the MedX Lumbar Extension machine. You can download it here (no email address required).

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Which muscles are most responsible for Low Back Pain?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:15:26 GMT

You may have heard lots about the “core” muscles being super important when trying to reduce back pain. That’s true, but only to a certain extent.

While the abdominal muscles are important, research and clinical experience indicates that there are four main muscles which appear to have the greatest role in back pain beginning in the first place.

The most common muscles that are responsible for Low Back Pain are the Iliopsoas, Quadratus Lumborum, the Gluteals and the Multifidus muscles. They are the muscles that attach in and around your spine.

Iliopsoas Muscle – the hidden prankster

The Iliopsoas is actually two muscles that meet at the front of your hip. The psoas major attaches into the bottom vertebrae of your back – but they attach at the front of them. The other muscle, the iliacus, attaches on the inside of your pelvis, and runs downwards. Amazingly, when there are issues with these muscles – such as a sprain or active trigger points, it is very common for them to refer pain into the lower back. What It feels like is that the pain is very deep – so deep that no amount of poking or prodding can find it.

We can tell you right now - if you have “tried everything” for your back pain and nothing has worked so far, and these muscles hasn’t been properly assessed or treated properly, then it must be checked – it is highly likely to be involved.

Quadratus Lumborum – The side bender

This muscle connects your rib cage to your pelvis – and is most responsible for bending you from side to side. When you have an issue with this muscle, it causes pain that feels like there could be something wrong with your kidneys, and it will be difficult to straighten up, feeling like you are leaning to one side. This can often tighten up in conjunction with psoas as above.

Gluteal Muscles – the main movers of your hips

Everyone knows where the glutes are – they are your buttocks. There are actually three layers of gluteal muscles – and an assessment on how you stand, bend and walk can establish which of them are causing the most trouble.

In terms of pain, the gluteal muscles are usually involved when the pain is around your belt line, and radiates outwards toward the side of your hips. The gluteal muscles are also very commonly the cause of sciatic nerve-like pain… in fact, it is extremely common that sciatica is misdiagnosed as a problem with a nerve root, when it is actually tightness in the gluteal muscles that is causing the issue.

The Multifidus muscles – the deep protectors of your spine

A lot has been made of the core muscles, especially the abdominals. The abdominals, however, are like a sling that wraps around your internal organs, and don’t attach directly into your spine.

The multifidus muscles are more important when it comes to lower back pain. In fact this group of muscles are the deepest layer of muscles, and like iliopsoas, attach directly into the spinal column – into the back of the vertebrae. There are stacks of research in the last 20 years which show that the integrity of these muscles are paramount, and are one of the biggest predictors of whether back pain will progress.

They cause back locally in the spine, and require strengthening to return to full function.

We offer a vast variety of different treatment methods to rehabilitate muscles – you can find out more about them here .

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Why do triggers sometimes cause pain, but sometimes doesn’t?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 05:21:50 GMT

Trigger avoidance is one thing that is commonly recommended for people living with headache and migraine conditions. However, what should you do if triggers sometimes cause an attack, and other times it’s completely fine?

What’s going on?

The answer is quite simple - it all depends on how sensitive your nervous system is at any given time. (You can read more about this here). This is why some days you can have, for example, 2 glasses of red wine and be fine one day, and have a sip of red wine and have a huge migraine the next. The key is to provide the tools to wind down that sensitivity.

When your system is wound up, it needs less input from the environment to cause an attack to occur.

A good way to think of this is an example of sunburnt skin. If you put cold water on the sunburn, it feels very cold, but if you put warm water on the skin, it feels very hot… the skin is much more sensitive to temperature than normal. If your system is “on edge”, then your headache or migraine may come on easier than usual.

Good examples of this occurring are:

A lady who began to get hormonal headaches after having a car accident (her neck was injured, sensitised the system, and then the hormonal input was being received as abnormal when it hadn’t done so before)
A lady who can drink as much red wine as she likes, provided it isn’t 2 days either side of her period (the hormone change sensitises the system more than usual, so the red wine now is being received as “abnormal”)
A man who can read books for as long as he likes, as long as he isn’t stressed at work (looking down for long periods puts the neck into flexion – a normal movement – but when stress is added, then the neck movement causes a headache)

When we are addressing triggers, it’s very useful to have knowledge about what could be bringing an attack on, but it may be a symptom rather than a cause. The important thing is to find out what is sensitising your system the most and address that factor. It’s amazing how often addressing the neck allows sufferers to eliminate their monthly headaches, reduce headaches caused by stress, or reduce the frequency, intensity and duration of their migraines.

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What’s the difference between a headache and a migraine?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 05:01:12 GMT

This question is probably the most frequent question that we need to answer daily. It confuses patients, doctors and pharmacists alike, frustrates families and really shapes your identity. It can also make a patient feel as if they are much worse than what they are, because there may be multiple overlapping headache conditions happening at once. So what’s going on?

Put simply, the differences between a headache and migraine are largely symptomatic. A headache is “just” pain in the head, whereas a migraine has neurological symptoms, such as nausea, dizziness, visual auras, slurred speech and others. This is an overly simplistic answer, but understanding that your symptoms can be given different labels based on a view of what your symptoms look and feel like is the key thing to understand.

In fact, the words “headache”, “migraine” and other terms like “Cluster headache”, “Medication Overuse Headache” and others, are defined in a document called the International Classification of Headache Disorders. This is the document that standardises what you should “diagnose” someone with should they present with a set of symptoms.

But there is a huge problem with doing things this way.

This very long and overly confusing document lays out over 300 different types of headache and migraine disorders – however they are mostly defined by the symptoms, not by the causes.

The biggest mistake that neurologists and researchers can make at times, is to get caught up in trying to label your symptoms under these very rigid criteria – to the point where a single person has 5 diagnoses at the same time… which isn’t helpful. Are there actually 5 different causes for this person?

Are there really 300 different causes of headache?

The latest research is showing that even though headaches and migraines feel distinctly different, it may actually have the same cause – that is a sensitive nerve centre in your brain… the nerve centre that is responsible for a headache or migraine starting in the first place. This part of your brain is called the Trigeminocervical Nucleus.

In short, one man’s headache is another person’s migraine – it all just depends on who is saying it and what the context is.

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What do you do to assess that headaches and migraines come from the neck?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 04:58:05 GMT

At The Headache and Pain Management Centre, we use a variety of methods to diagnose if the neck is involved in your headache or migraine condition.

The main method we use is a systematic way to work out which joints could be involved, and in which direction. It entails pushing gently on the joints of the top of the neck, and looking for two key things:

Whether the joint is stiff, tender, or not moving as well as it could be
If the familiar symptoms of your headache or migraine can be reproduced by pushing on it.

The “gold standard” of being able to determine if a headache or migraine is coming from the neck, is if the familiar head pain can be replicated, and then the head pain decreases to zero as the thumb pressure is sustained on the affected joint. If this happens, then it is extremely likely that your neck is involved with your headache or migraine condition.

This systematic approach is now used all over the world, due to its success in assessing and treating headache and migraine conditions. You may have heard about it, or seen other physiotherapists or osteopaths who attempt to treat in this way. However, this is only one part of being able to fully and accurately diagnose the cause of your head pain – given that there will be 15-20% of patients where the headache or migraine can’t be diagnosed or treated in this way.

There are other methods, developed by The Headache and Pain Management Centre, that we use to further assist in the diagnosis and treatment of headaches and migraines. Using our vast experience, with treating all kinds of unusual headache and migraine conditions, we also utilise the latest assessment and treatment methods, such as:

Pain Neuroscience Education (Brain Retraining)
Muscle strength testing using our MedX Machine
Assessing the relationship with the Autonomic Nervous System
Considering Social and Psychological Factors

All of these above, can have a great impact if not assessed and diagnosed correctly, early.

Click here to find out more about our Initial Consultation, and how we develop your own personal treatment plan.

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What causes Headache and Migraine?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 04:10:36 GMT

All Headaches and migraines are caused by a nerve centre in the brain that becomes overly sensitive, meaning that things that shouldn’t give you a headache or migraine – like food triggers, stress, hormones and neck movement – begin to give you symptoms.

This nerve centre, is called the trigeminocervical nucleus, but we call it “The Headache Hub”. This “Headache Hub” is where a large number of nerves pass through, which supply a whole number of different body parts – as seen in the diagram above.

As you can see, there are a lot of different body parts that are involved!

When your “headache hub” is sensitised, what it means is that normal input from any of those areas above, can be misinterpreted by your brain as being dangerous, causing a headache or migraine to occur.

In normal circumstances:

If you have a stroke or a concussion, you will get a headache – this is a direct input from the blood vessels or the meninges in the head.
If you have an ear infection, there is local inflammation in your ear, causing ear pain and pain nearby (like your temple or jaw)
If you have an infection (like the flu), or a hangover – then the Autonomic Nervous System is warning you of a danger, so you would get a headache or migraine-like symptoms.

But when you have a sensitised Headache Hub:

You can get extreme pain from having the smallest amount of alcohol, the wrong food or normal hormonal changes
You can feel dizzy, sick and off-balance, even if your ears and sinuses are perfect and you have no infection
You can have a throbbing, pounding pain in your head even if there is absolutely no stress, no danger and your diet is good.

So what’s going on?

The reason the “headache hub” is sensitised is because one of those nerves is sending constant input into it. This input can be a very small input, but if it happens over a long period of time, then your brain becomes more and more sensitive to it. Your brain hasn’t got a very good ability to distinguish what’s causing what to happen – the only thing you experience is the pain.

Now here’s the kicker – your brain often gets things very wrong when trying to localise where a problem is coming from. As you may be aware, pain can be referred – which means that you feel the pain a long way away from where the problem is. Think of someone with sciatica (leg pain from the back), or someone having a heart attack (pain in the shoulder or arm) as common examples. Most Headaches and Migraines, even though they are felt in the head, aren’t actually being caused by anything in the head itself – it’s actually caused by one of the structures in the diagram above – where the neck is the most common.

The key to treatment is to find out what nerve or what structure is sensitising your system, and correct it, so that the headaches and migraines don’t have a chance to begin in the first place. You can find out how we diagnose where your headache or migraine could be coming from here .

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What are the different types of headache and migraine conditions that you treat?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 04:02:35 GMT

We treat all manner of headache and migraine conditions – including Migraine with Aura, Tension Headache, Hormonal Headaches and Migraines, Cluster Headaches, and many, many more.

Migraine

Migraine is the biggest cause of disability in Australia, characterised by a headache with fully reversible neurological symptoms. Find out more here .

Tension Headache

Tension Headache is what you have when you have a vice-like, compressive pain that’s usually on both sides of your head, and can last from mere hours to days or weeks at a time. Find out more here .

Cluster Headache

Often called “the worst pain a human can experience”, this excruciating pain causes stabbing pain behind the eye, lasting between 5 and 90 minutes, numerous times per day. It can also cause a teary eye, runny nose and hot skin. Clic k here to find out more.

Trigeminal Neuralgia

This electric-shock like pain shoots down the cheek into the eye, face and lips, and can make it extremely difficult to eat, chew, brush your teeth, or even sneeze. It’s dreadful. Find out more about this awful condition here .

Hormonal Headaches and Migraines

If you get headache or migraine at “that time of the month” – it’s probably been labelled as a Hormonal Headache or Hormonal Migraine. But all may not be what it seems. Click here to find out more.

We also treat many other types of headache and migraine conditions – this is not an exhaustive list. Contact us if you have been diagnosed with a condition not listed below, and we’ll let you know if we can help.

Abdominal Migraine
Basilar Migraine
Vestibular Migraine
Sinus Headache
Hypnic Headache
Hemicrania Continnua
Mixed Headache – i.e. if you have 2 or 3 (or more!) different types of headache
Headaches that ‘come from your jaw’
Blurred vision, nausea or dizziness when all tests and scans are otherwise clear
Red Ear Syndrome
Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome

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I’ve tried physio and chiro before and it hasn’t worked. Why could this work when others haven’t?

jai@clearpixel.com.au (Jai Warner) — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 03:52:37 GMT

We are experts in headaches, migraines and chronic pain.

With the greatest respect to other health professionals, it is common knowledge that any service provider is only as good as the education they have undertaken, and clinical experience that they have. There are some physiotherapists that treat predominantly Cardiothoracic issues or in aged care, and others that treat Sports injuries exclusively. We are experts in headaches, migraines and chronic pain.

Don’t visit our clinic if you are looking to rehabilitate after a stroke, or for children with developmental delays – there are much better physios than us for the best treatment!

When it comes to headache and migraine, it takes a lot of training, expertise and clinical experience to get it totally right. In undergraduate physiotherapy programs, students are taught about headache for 2 hours over an entire 4 year course – and the subject matter that is taught barely scratches the surface of what is needed to get things right.

To our profession’s credit, the awareness of headache and migraine as being a “physiotherapy problem” is steadily gaining traction, meaning that there are more and more people training in how to diagnose and treat headache and migraine. However, there is a big gap between learning the tools to use, and knowing exactly when to apply them to get the best results.

The Headache and Pain Management Centre opened in 2013 as Brisbane Headache Centre. Our director, Chris Fawcett, sacrificed the rest of his physio career in order to focus solely on treating headache and migraine conditions. It was the first clinic of it’s kind in Queensland, and since then, many other clinics have opened after seeing his success. The lessons learnt from treating headache and migraine day after day have molded our treatment approach, and it is always changing as science discovers new things.

Due to the results that we were obtaining, we expanded and now have 4 staff, who are all trained in various methods of treating Headache and Migraine Conditions, and also by Chris personally. We run daily meetings about every case, and weekly in services to ensure that all the bases are covered. We provide the best care possible for headache and migraine, because we are not “just another physio”.

The Headache and Pain Management Centre was built on the treatment of headache and migraine, and we have seen thousands of happy patients. Find out more about why we got into treating headache and migraine here.

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Latest Stunning Research Data for the MedX Back Machine

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Could your Back Pain be treatable? Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Why it is so important to assess the C2-3 Joint with Headaches and Migraines

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Is your Headache or Migraine coming from your Neck? Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

The little known secret relationship between Breathing and Neck Pain

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Is your Neck Pain treatable? Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Could Carpal Tunnel Syndrome be the Wrong Diagnosis?

Do you have Wrist or Hand Pain that isn't improving? Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

How having a strong back can help with pretty much everything

Can we treat your back pain? Contact us now to find out!

The number one fear patients have when getting their neck assessed

Can we treat your pain? Contact us now to find out!

How the narrative around pain is hijacked by drug companies

Can we treat your pain? Contact us now to find out!

The 3 biggest reasons why the neck should be checked for migraines and tension headaches

Could your Migraines or Tension Headache be coming from your Neck? Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Occipital Neuralgia - What is it and what could help it out?

Could your Occipital Neuralgia be treatable? Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

The little-known relationship between breathing, neck issues and headaches

Could your Neck Pain be treatable? Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

When bursitis of the hip or shoulder is diagnosed, this is vital information for the best outcome

Wanting help with your Shoulder or Hip Pain? Contact us today!

All about Cluster Headache and Trigeminal Neuralgia

Could your cluster headache or trigeminal neuralgia be coming from your neck? Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Headache and Migraine Week - Which pain from which joint?

Could your headache or migraine be coming from your neck? Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

How persistent pain differs from acute pain, and finally - recognition that not everyone is able to express pain

Why adding a simple phrase like 'pain sufferers should be respected' is just so important

What is the difference between pain, and the signals that warn your body of a problem?

Is your Headache and Migraine coming from your Neck?

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Is your Headache and Migraine coming from your Neck?

Find out now by clicking the button.

Is your Back Pain treatable?

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Is your Neck Pain treatable?

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Is your Hormonal Headache or Migraine coming from your Neck?

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Could your Back Pain be treatable?

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Can we treat your pain?

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Is your Headache or Migraine coming from your Neck?

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Is your Pudendal Neuralgia Treatable?

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Is your Headache or Migraine coming from your Neck?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Is your Headache or Migraine coming from your Neck?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Is your Headache or Migraine coming from your Neck?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Do you need help with your Chronic Pain?

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Is your Posture causing your Neck Pain or Headaches and Migraines?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Need help Choosing the Right Health Professional?

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Is your Chronic Pain treatable?

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Do you need help with your Whiplash Injury?

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Want to know more about our MedX Machine?

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Could your Back Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Is your Headache or Migraine coming from your Neck?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Is your Neck Pain treatable?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Do you have Wrist or Hand Pain that isn't improving?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Can we treat your back pain?

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Can we treat your pain?

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Can we treat your pain?

Contact us now to find out!

Could your Migraines or Tension Headache be coming from your Neck?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Occipital Neuralgia be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Wanting help with your Shoulder or Hip Pain?

Contact us today!

Could your cluster headache or trigeminal neuralgia be coming from your neck?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your headache or migraine be coming from your neck?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Could your Head Pain be coming from your neck?

Take our test to find out now.

Do you have a Sporting Injury that isn't improving?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Do you have a Sporting Injury that isn't improving?

Find out if we can help by clicking the button.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Neck Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Back Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Are you a New Patient Thinking of Visiting?

Find out what we offer New Patients on Day One. You won't be disappointed.

Could your Back Pain be treatable?

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Could your Back Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Back Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Back Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Back Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Back Pain be treatable?

Find out by taking our 2 minute online test.

Could your Head Pain be coming from your neck?

Take our test to find out now.

Could your Head Pain be coming from your neck?

Take our test to find out now.