For 100 years chiropractors, knowing that their treatment was an effective means of reducing both frequency and intensity of head pain looked to contemporary anatomical knowledge for the answer.
Effectiveness of this therapy is thought to arise from several possible explanations: (1) the reduction of local neck muscle hypertonicity following a chiropractic adjustment or manipulation to the cervical spine. (The term manipulation is a poor choice as it implies a long slow motion involving numerous structures or vertebral segments of the neck. The term adjustment is specific for a fast (high velocity) but short (low amplitude) thrust aimed at only one vertebral joint or vertebra.)
The musculature at the back of the neck near the base of the skull,which headache suffers know so well,often becomes very tender and sore with the onset or progress of a headache. These small but powerful muscles attach to the fibrous lining of the scalp. This fibrous structure is called the aponeuorsis and is located under the hair and skin covering your head. Tension and tightness (or hypertonicity) of these muscles exerts tension on this aponeurosis and gives the feeling of pressure over the scalp or of a band around the skull or the feeling that someone is standing on your head. Chiropractic adjustments are effective in reducing the hypertonicity of these suboccipital muscles thereby reducing the sensation of pressure around the skull.
(2) Another aspect of chiropractic treatment is thought to be the resultant reduction of nerve irritation that occurs with a proper vertebral adjustment. Both mechanical irritations from osseous, ligamentous or soft tissues of the upper neck as well as inflammatory irritation caused from related trauma to the spinal nerves of the upper cervical spine can be relieved.
(3) A third concept is that the impingement of the pain sensitive structures of the spinal vertebrae themselves such as joint cartilage, ligaments or spinal disks cause reflex pain loops in the upper cervical and lower brainstem of the central nervous system.
All of these theories may be valid and may work separately, in concert, or in some combinations thereof to produce pains in the head consistent with the continuum from tension to migraine. The variety of symptoms, signs and presenting causes of headache patients entering a chiropractic office are almost as varied as the patients themselves.
Lately another theory has emerged which probably accounts more for the cause of headache and the success of chiropractic than all other theories. A recent new discovery has the world of human anatomists abuzz.
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