Are headaches stopping you from living a normal life? You’re not alone – It's estimated that approximately 45 million Americans complain of headaches each year. That works out to about one in every six people in the US!
Our approach to care gets to the root cause of your headaches. Are they stemming from an injury, hormone imbalance, food intolerances, are they stress-induced or some combination of these? Headaches have many causes, and we’ll help you figure out what’s causing yours and some natural treatment options.
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How We Can Help
Explore the root causes of headaches – digestive issues like food intolerances or pro-inflammatory foods that may be an issue for you, stress, hormonal triggers and imbalances, and even possible environmental triggers. The teams at Bastyr will work with you to identify and diagnose your headaches and may recommend nutrition and dietary management, herbs, supplements, and teas for management and prevention. They may also offer stress management tools and possible referral to our Physical Medicine department for the musculoskeletal components of headaches.
An added component for some may include a look at environmental exposures that could trigger your headaches, including how to reduce exposure and remove toxins from your system.
Acupuncture is well known for being effective in the management of pain and headaches. Your team may recommend a series of appointments during which needles are placed at specific points to relieve headache and migraine pain. This approach can work for the acute management of headaches but also works to treat the underlying causes for a lasting resolution.
Stress is a well-known cause of headaches, including poor sleep due to worry, anxiety, and depression. If you find it challenging to manage your daily stress, anxiety, or depression, make a counseling appointment to explore the roots of your stress, learn new ways to manage your thoughts and start feeling better.
While we can’t ignore the nutritional, stress, and hormonal components of headaches, we also must consider your physical/structural health, as an imbalance could also cause chronic headaches.
Addressing musculoskeletal holding patterns is paramount to lasting management of headaches. Our teams will help identify tight muscles, and bone misalignments that could be related to your headaches. Using manual techniques to address trigger points, tight muscles and spine alignment, we can help resolve the underlying issues.
