Headache and migraine
Migraine is the 3rd most prevalent illness in the world.
Migraines tend to be hereditary and about 90% of migraine sufferers have a family history of migraines. A migraine can cause severe throbbing pain or a pulsing sensation, usually on just one side of the head. Migraine attacks can cause significant pain for hours to days and can be so severe that the pain is disabling. Migraines typically progress through 4 stages: prodrome, aura, headache and postdrome, although you may not experience all 4 stages.
Do you experience photophobia or sensitivity to light? Do you experience nausea, vomiting or dizziness with your attack? Do you have tingling or numbness in your face or extremities? Do you experience warning symptoms such as an aura before the headache?
Biofeedback
Biofeedback can help when the headaches have either a stress/physiological component, or a musculoskeletal component. Frequently, people who suffer from chronic stress will have dysregulated breathing patterns and tension in their muscles, particularly their upper traps, sternocleidomastoids, and their deltoids along with temporalis and mentalis muscles of the face, all of which will contribute to chronic tension headaches. Biofeedback can help people learn to regulate their stress and learn what relaxation feels like in those muscle groups.
Neurofeedback
Neurofeedback is an all-natural approach that can have an impact on the pain networks in the brain. Sometimes the brain continues to generate headaches as the dominant symptom because the brain mistakenly interprets cognitive work as pain in an effort to make sure that people don’t overdo it. Over time, consistent activation of those networks can lead the brain to generate chronic headaches. Neurofeedback can help to reset the pain networks in the brain.
CVAC
Cyclic Variations in Adaptive Conditioning (CVAC) is a whole body adaptive conditioning program where there are dynamic changes in pressure, eliciting adaptive responses from our bodies. The CVAC acts on the lymphatic system, and helps the body better achieve dynamic homeostasis through frequent cycles, which force the body to adapt and become more flexible to a rapidly changing environment.
light therapy
Light therapy is beneficial for anyone who suffers from headaches due to a medical or pro-inflammatory condition such as chronic Lyme disease or fibromyalgia. Infrared light acts on the photoreceptors of the mitochondria, stimulating increased ATP production and better cellular metabolism, which in turn reduces inflammation systemically.
Therapy
People often report chronic headaches when they’re stressed and anxious, and also when they’re depressed, and so psychotherapy can help people learn better coping mechanisms that reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression, thereby reducing the headaches. If they have idiopathic migraines, psychotherapy can be very concrete and goal-directed, helping people to identify their migraine triggers and make lifestyle changes to reduce the exposure to their triggers. If the headaches are psychosomatic and trauma-related, then forms of emotionally-focused or psychodynamic psychotherapy can help to alleviate the psychic wounding that is being transmitted as physical pain.