Discovering Wellness
Headaches
What do you do when you suffer from a pounding headache? Do you grit your teeth and carry on? Lie down? Pop a pill and hope for the best? There is a better alternative, chiropractic care. Everyone gets the occasional headache, but some headaches get so bad they won’t go away. While drugs treat the symptoms, they often ignore the fundamental cause of the problem. The worst headaches are sometimes slow to respond with the intended effect of the medications. The stronger medications can have negative and long-lasting effects to the rest of your body when used for extended periods. This is why many people finally decide to seek more natural and safe solutions for their problem such as chiropractic care.
Dr. Howard often helps patients overcome head pain. The first step for our patients is to understand what is the main cause of the problems. Headaches are most commonly caused by changes made by vascular constriction, muscle tension or even sinus congestion, low blood sugar, high blood pressure, stress and fatigue. The two most common headaches are: tension headaches (also called cervicogenic headaches) and migraine headaches. There is a third, less common, type of headaches called a cluster headache that is a cousin to the migraine.
The most common headache is Tension headaches. They are frequently the outcome of stress or bad posture, which stresses the spine and muscles in the upper back and neck. Tension headaches are described as a constant dull, achy feeling on one side or both side of the head. The pain usually begins slowly and gradually and can last for a few minutes or days.
In many cases, headaches have shown to be connected with areas of the neck where movement is restricted or bones are out of alignment.
These dysfunctional regions are called vertebral subluxations. Dr. Howard corrects vertebral subluxations, and the headaches associated with them, with gentle maneuvers called chiropractic adjustments. The result is better movement and posture to the spine. These headaches can radiate pain all over the head and feel centered in many different locations, but it is most important to know that chiropractic is a great solution to those headaches.
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Immunity & Nerves
Our immune system is our body’s defense system. It is constantly fighting off bacterial infections, viral infections, the flu, cancer or anything else that may try to harm you. Most of the time, the body’s immune system wins, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. Medical interventions, particularly antibiotics, originally designed to save lives when the body is in a crisis, are now being widely used as the “first line of defense” without letting the body do its work first. The immune system like many systems of the body is coordinated with the nervous system. During an immune response, the nervous system and the immune system ‘talk to each other’ and this communication is essential for maintaining homeostasis or balance in the body. Both systems work together to create optimal responses for the body to adapt and heal appropriately. If the Nervous System is not functioning properly, then the Immune System cannot function at 100%, thus the body becomes defenseless against the infectious diseases.
Dr. Howard analyzes the spine for any abnormalities called vertebral subluxations. Subluxation is the term for misalignments of the spine that causes compression, and irritation of nerve pathways affecting organ systems of the body. Since the nervous system controls all functions of the body, including the immune system. They are an example of physical nerve stress that affects neuronal control. Neural dysfunctions due to spinal misalignments are stressful to the body, and cause abnormal changes that lead to a poorly coordinated immune response. By aligning the spine with a corrective adjustment it reduces the stress on the nervous system, and rises white blood counts significantly.