How PT Can Be Your Solution for Headaches

Headaches can severely impact your daily life, but luckily physical therapy can help alleviate certain types of headaches. My name is Luke VanderZouwen, and I’m a physical therapist at Full Potential Physical Therapy. Today, I’d like to talk about headaches and whether headaches might be a reason to seek out physical therapy. 

What Can Cause Headaches?

Headaches can be a complex issue. There can be a lot of potential factors at play that lead to a headache, including: 

• Stress
• Past medical history
• Sleep issues
• Visual triggers like light
• Diet triggers

One thing that I find is often overlooked with headaches is the role of the muscle systems that surround the head and neck. Issues with these muscles can lead to musculoskeletal headaches. My job as a physical therapist is often to determine if the musculoskeletal system is in some way involved in headaches that are going on. And quite often, it is. 

How Muscles Can Lead to Headaches

Stress in the muscles that line the base of the skull can cause headaches that sometimes refer around the eye area into the side of the head. The muscles on the side of the neck and upper trapezius (shoulders) tend to refer symptoms from the back of the head, up over the head, and to the forehead.  

Quite often, these types of headaches are relatively easy to diagnose because when you touch, stretch, or use those muscles, people will report an increase in their headache symptoms. When that’s the case, there is a very good chance that the musculoskeletal system is a cause of the headaches. When that’s the case, physical therapy can be a helpful solution.

How Physical Therapy Can Address Musculoskeletal Headaches

When I work on headaches, what I most often look for is what’s causing those muscles to be sensitive or irritated. Your posture throughout the course of the day can strain or irritate your muscles. Sometimes the muscle just isn’t strong enough, or it’s tight in a way that is limiting one’s movement. 

In the early stages of treatment, the first thing I’ll work on is to calm down those sensitive or irritated muscles. This might mean modifying some activities to take strain off of them in the short term. We might also need to do some hands-on type work or stretching throughout the day to keep that muscle a little bit happier. 

Ultimately, what I’m working on is building up that muscle’s capacity for activity. The goal is to make it stronger for carrying, pushing, and pulling type motions. We can also build it up so that it can handle being in certain postures for longer periods of time, like working at a computer for long hours. All those types of things would fall in the realm of where a physical therapist might be able to help with headache related issues. 

Call Full Potential for a Consultation

If you’ve been dealing with persistent headaches, especially if they’re related to certain activities that you’re doing and you suspect that your muscles may be at play, reach out to Full Potential at (616) 537-2837. We can do a screening to see if we might be able to help you through your headache related issue.