Headaches Sufferers: What Muscle Tension Type are You?
Muscle tension and headaches make the perfect recipe for a crap day. But headaches don’t have to rule your life. No matter what headache type you are. Muscle tightness and tenderness as well as myofascial trigger points often accompany tension-type headaches as well as migraines. Whether they are a contributing factor is still unclear according to many studies. Regardless, relieving muscles in the neck, upper back and base of the skull can help mitigate symptoms by relaxing the tension and simultaneously increasing and smoothing out the blood flow to the head and neck.
Finding relief: Is muscles tightness causing your tension headaches?
According to Janet Travell—an American physical and medical researcher, who was a pioneer in developing treatments for myofascial pain including dry needling—certain muscles present with trigger points in tension-type headaches, an assertion that has been supported by other studies. When these muscles get trigger points, they have certain “pain patterns”. Learn about what muscles might be causing headache-like pain or exacerbating your headache pain below:
The semispinalis capitis is a muscles in the neck that can create a pain pattern that wraps forward around the head like a headband, reaching the temples and further forward to over the eye; to the back of the head, or to the base of the head where it meets the neck and traveling down into the top of the shoulder.
The suboccipital muscles are just at the base of the skull and attach the occipital (the lowest part of the skull) to the first and second vertebra of the neck. The are responsible for controlling small movements of rocking and nodding, rotating and side bending of the head. The best illustration of their movement is the subtle “spy nod”. These little guys cause that deep head pain that is often difficult for patients to pinpoint. Sometimes it can even feel like the headache is hurting everywhere, traveling from the base of the head forward towards the eyes.
Splenius cervicis and splenius capitis are two other muscles located in the neck extending down in the upper portion of the back. Splenius capitis refers pain to the top of the head, while splenius cervicis refers to the back of the head and behind the eyes and feels like an ache deep in the skull.
The SCM (steroncleidomastoid) muscle on the neck is a muscle that rotates the head to the opposite side. Trigger points in this muscle can refer pain to the forehead or in a questions-mark shape around the eye.
The trapezius, or “traps”, are the muscles between the shoulders and the neck. The ones that are always tight when you’re stressed. The traps can refer pain to behind the ear, the temple, the base of the neck or down into the shoulder.
Photo source: triggerpoint.net
While this list of muscles gives a very rudimentary picture of what can cause headache pain, a single muscle is rarely the only culprit. More often it is a pattern, or multiple patterns, through the body that develops from years of compensation, dysfunction movement, repetitive motion, or even emotions expresses through the body. A well trained acupuncturist will treat these patterns interwoven within a holistic and individualized plan based on additional symptoms a patient presents. Have recurrent headaches that won’t go away? Do you experience any of the pain patterns described above? You might be a good candidate to see if acupuncture can help.