Headaches

Headaches are one of the most common everyday ailments someone may have. They can have many different causes from dehydration, posture, stress, tiredness or even eye strain. Most of the time they are not a chronic issue that needs any form of treatment and sometimes they can be dealt with simply by drinking more water or taking

some over the counter pain relief. When they start to become a recurring issue that gets in the way of work or family time, this is when you should seek treatment. Migraines are slightly different in that they won't often occur with only the pain in the head but also have nausea, sensitivity to light, they may last hours or days at a time and will be very persistent to pain medication.

Chinese medicine views headaches very differently to Western Medicine. Headaches are an internal condition caused by many different pathologies. During my very first Chinese Medicine class, the lecturer explained to us that when a patient seeks treatment for a headache you work backwards with your diagnosis and find a treatment that

suits them, unlike western medicine that treats many things such as headaches with the same treatment. This idea made me fall in love with Chinese Medicine and acupuncture. Finding a treatment that is suited to the person and individual so that they can have long lasting results, preventing them from suffering from headaches and getting back to doing what they love the most.

Headaches that come from the neck and are caused by poor posture we look at the neck muscles and what you do for a job. This is very common in office workers and students. We have evolved to be constantly sitting and looking slightly downwards to our computers or phones.

As we bend our heads forward over our chest it increases in the amount

of weight that is put onto our neck muscles. At correct posture, our head weighs roughly 4-6kg, as we increase the angle it gets heavier, once we reach roughly 17deg it weighs about 17-20kg. This is a dramatic difference if you compare the two side by side. Adding this extra strain on several muscles that are not designed to be constantly stretched and supporting the weight at full flexion can cause massive amounts of tension through the base of the skull and produce what we all know as postural headaches or some refer to them as tension headaches.

Chinese Medicine looks heavily into the internal aspects of the body and each organ's relationships when treating headaches. There are quite a few systems that can be involved however, blood, Qi, the liver and the spleen are the most common culprits of chronic headaches. It is often that there is not enough Blood from a Chinese Medicine perspective, the Qi can also be deficient or not circulated around the body efficiently. Stress and diet can also play major roles.

In Chinese Medicine, we need to take in all lifestyle aspects of the person so that they can get the treatment that is suited for them. It is not as simple as one treatment fits all and we want long term results that prevent headaches from reoccurring. This includes, posture, diet, water intake, stress, sleep and lifestyle.

- Dr Nicholas Watson.