Modern drug treatment of headache (whether it’s the tension variety or a migraine) is ultimately doomed because it fails to address the underlying cause, and it produces significant risk for side effects. Rather than focusing on identifying and eliminating the precipitating factor, headache medications aim simply to provide symptomatic relief. Here it gets interesting: Several clinical studies have estimated that approximately 70 percent of patients with this kind of chronic pain suffer from drug-induced headaches due to the medications they are taking to suppress the original symptoms. In other words, the headache medications are giving them daily headaches, and if they quit taking the drugs, the headaches go away.

Treating the Cause of Tension Headaches
The primary therapy should be addressing the factors that trigger tension in the neck, face, or scalp muscles. Since the neck often holds tension produced from psychological stress, it’s especially important to learn to ease neck muscles through relaxation techniques. In addition, it’s important to address any structural factor that may be triggering tension headaches.

Chiropractic care can be quite helpful when misalignment of the spine creates muscular tension in the neck. Several clinical studies provide significant scientific evidence that chiropractic care can provide benefits for many patients with neck pain and headaches. It’s certainly worth a try. An alternative to chiropractic care is getting a referral to a conventional physical therapist (PT) from your primary care doctor. Clinical studies have shown conventional that PT—consisting of education for posture at home and work place, home exercise, massage, and stretching to the cervical spine muscles—can reduce the frequency and severity of tension headaches.

Treating the Cause of a Migraine Headache
Considerable evidence supports an association between migraine headaches and the instability of blood vessels. The mechanism of migraine can be described as a three-stage process: initiation, prodrome (time between initiation and appearance of headache), and headache. Although a particular trigger may be linked with the onset of a specific attack, it appears that initiation is dependent on the accumulation of several triggers over time. Once a critical point of susceptibility (or threshold) is reached, a “cascade event” is initiated that sets off a domino-like effect that ultimately produces a migraine.

Food allergies, histamine-releasing foods, alcohol (especially red wine), stress, hormonal changes (e.g., menstruation, ovulation, birth-control pills), and weather changes (especially barometric pressure changes) are examples of some common migraine triggers. The primary therapy is avoidance or elimination of these primary triggers.

In addition, several natural products have shown impressive results in the treatment of migraine headaches, including riboflavin (vitamin B2), magnesium, and Petadolex—a standardized extract from the butterbur plant (Petasites hybridus).