If you experience headaches, you are not alone. That familiar pain and tightness in your head is shared by nearly half of the world’s population. In fact, headaches are one of the most common disorders of the body’s nervous system.
Despite their wide prevalence, headaches remain an uncomfortable and often debilitating experience few sufferers fully understand. Many turn to pills, lifestyle changes, or other forms of relief, but you have other treatment options. Read on to learn more about headaches and how acupuncture may help next time you suffer from this condition.
What Are the Different Kinds of Headaches?
You may feel that the nagging headache that interferes with your day is due to dehydration or from a hangover. Lack of water can bring on the pain, which dissipates a few hours after you rehydrate. This type of headache is temporary. But you could suffer from several kinds of recurring headaches.
Tension Type Headache
The most common recurring headache is the tension type headache, or TTH. This type of headache begins in the neck or even the back and creeps upward until you feel like a band is tightly wrapped around your skull. Sufferers with stress or neck problems experience TTHs, and doctors believe lack of sleep could be one cause.
Migraine Headache
Migraine headaches are the second most common type of headache. Migraines can begin on one side of the head and increase in pain to the point of throbbing. Exertion or movement seems to worsen migraines. Often migraines heighten sensitivity to light and sound or cause nausea.
Cluster Headache
Lasting a few minutes or hours before returning again later, cluster headaches occur in groups or clusters throughout the day and can last months. Cluster headaches are severe and seem to center near one eye. The pain is often severe enough to cause eye redness or tearing. Sometimes, your sinuses may feel blocked or your nose may become runny.
How Do People Try to Get Headache Relief?
Surprisingly, many people with recurring headache disorders feel their condition is not serious, even though the pain can be excruciating. After all, headaches don’t last forever, are not contagious, and are usually not solely responsible for death. As a result of this thinking, around half of headache sufferers self-treat and do not seek professional medical treatment.
Those with headaches try different remedies to find relief if they choose not to visit their doctor. Some take over-the-counter medication or use cold compresses to relieve pain. Still others alter their environment and dim the lights or stay in a quiet room to mitigate migraine pain. Those with TTHs try to remedy the core of their headache woes and soothe sore neck muscles.
If you have experience with recurring headaches, you probably try to avoid certain triggers known to bring on a headache. Certain odors and foods like those replete with nitrates can force the onset of a headache. However, what if medication or relaxation techniques don’t work well to stop full-blown headache pain? One solution is to try acupuncture.
Can Acupuncture Help Relieve Headaches?
The Chinese medical technique of acupuncture involves very slim needles to trigger pressure points in the body. Needlepoints inserted into certain zones or pressure points in close proximity to nerves stimulate the release of endorphins and other hormones.
Because there are multiple types of headaches, acupuncture needles need to be inserted into different areas of the body to achieve relief. An expert in acupuncture will be able to locate the right pressure points after they determine which headache you suffer from.
Talk to the caring professionals at Acupuncture & Holistic Health Associates about your recurring headache pain and how we can use acupuncture as a treatment to help find the relief you deserve.
