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Neck Pain, Headaches, and Migraines - Causes and Treatment Options

Our primary goal is to address your hopes, wants, desires, and fears surrounding your concerns by utilizing an advanced pain categorization system.

Our Chiropractic Treatment Approach Toward Neck Pain

At ICT Muscle & Joint Clinic, our emphasis is on classifying pain through an intricate science-based, pain categorization system and then directing you to the appropriate healthcare provider. If your shoulder pain is within a category of our skillset, we start addressing the concern as soon as possible. To better help you understand your at-home exercises, we have created Video Programs. This allows you to take your health back into your own hands, being mobile with your rehab and recovery.

We work hard to educate you as a customer in understanding your pain to allow you to make the most informed decisions possible for yourself. Knowledge is power, and self-empowerment is our game. 

Common Associated Costs for Neck Pain Care in the United States:

6900 +
Ranges up to $31,650
Average Price: $6,575
80000 +
Ranges up to $150,000
50000 +
Ranges up to $90,000
20000 +
Ranges up to $50,000

It is important to note, many individuals must undergo rehabilitation services after a surgery. There is added time and expenses not calculated within cost of a surgery.

Our In-person, Telehealth, and Video Programs are designed to directly target the problem at hand with the appropriate intervention led by our pain auditing system. This will drastically decrease the extent of your neck recovery while eliminating the potential for undergoing expensive, time-consuming, invasive interventions.

Dig Deeper

Click on any item below to learn more about neck pain, headaches, and migraines.

What Causes Neck Pain, Headaches and Migraines?

What causes pain and what is the source of pain are two different matters. However, these two matters, conceptually, become jumbled up into one. We should always separate these two as they are profoundly different. Causes can be infinite. The way you think, feel, move, or rest may cause the pain. Therefore “causes of pain” may be infinite. However, the source of pain may be local to the place of pain, irritating local pain fibers or much further away, resulting in the need for further investigation and categorization of the pain if long-lasting results, or results at all, are the desired outcome.

What are Symptoms of Headaches and Migraines?

Research estimates that 90% of Americans suffer from headaches and/or migraines in any given year. Symptoms of headaches can vary drastically depending on the causative factors. Migraines, however, will often present with similar symptoms during each episode. To help you distinguish a migraine from a headache, a simple mnemonic was created: “P.O.U.N.D.” Pulsating, One-day Duration, Unilateral (one side of the head), Nausea/vomiting, Disabling intensity.

The Mechanical (Movement Pillar) Dynamics of Neck Pain, Headaches, and Migraines

Causative factors for headaches and migraines often can have overlapping symptoms, but they usually will have different aggravating factors. Headaches often are the result of tight, knotted areas or muscular tension creating a referral pattern. Transitional segments of the spine are common areas for trigger points to reside (i.e. the base of the skull and the junction between the neck, shoulders and mid back).

Surrounding all joints there must be a balance between tension and compression of the ligaments, muscles, tendons, and fascia. When a local problem is determined to be a local cause, it can be due to an imbalance of these structures. This requires mobilization and release of tight structures in addition to strengthening weak or inhibited structure of the painful joint as well as the joints above and below.

Headaches and migraines are frequently the consequence of improper, neuromuscular stabilization strategies often times in association to long durations of a given position and/or improper breathing patterns. These causes are typically long-standing once they produce symptoms.

Common Neck Pain Centric Diagnoses for Which We Screen

These are a few common diagnoses we screen and treat for regarding migraine and headache symptoms. This list is not exhaustive as many symptoms and concerns do not have great diagnoses.

  1. Cervicogenic headaches
  2. Tension-type headaches
  3. Temporomandibular Joint Disorder – TMJD
  4. Trigeminal Neuralgia
  5. Stroke
  6. Seizure
  7. Myofascial Trigger Points
  8. Migraines
  9. Cervical Radiculopathy
  10. Whiplash
  11. Facet Syndrome
  12. Tendinosis
  13. Tendonitis

Respecting Your Finances

By offering our various programs we can quickly assess and test what is driving your symptoms and in turn provide quick options for care. Because of this, we will not only speed up recovery, but decrease overall expenses.

The Extra Professional Touch to Your Neck Pain

If there are specific services local to where you live, we will help direct you to those services if needed. By using us as your portal of entry contact to your neck and head health, we can be a non-biased party, providing only the best science-backed information. Our emphasis is on getting you to do what you need to do to liberate you from a system – the healthcare system.

To take it a step further, it may be of extreme importance for you to read through our rehabilitation page to fully grasp how we program corrective exercise programs for you. There are many mechanical causes for neck pain, headaches, and migraines. To appreciate this complexity, Travell, Simons and Simons’, MDs original work in the 1980s highlighted how various muscles can produce referral pain patterns into the head and neck. This can be further complicated by the underlying mechanical stressors which can lead to tension within these muscle groups highlighted by Vladimir Janda’s Upper Cross Syndrome and its progressions.1

To take it even a step further, all these complications can actually manifest in the chemistry of these painful and problematic tissue(s). The body is an amazing self-regulating, self-healing machine. If you are having reoccurring pain throughout the day, then you are placing enough physical stress on the problematic tissue(s) to which the chemistry of your body cannot heal the injured or stressed tissue(s) quick enough. This is leading to your physical pains are actually chemical in nature. To fully heal the injured tissue leading to your neck pain, headaches, and migraines, we need to heal the chemistry within your body. We do this through our functional health interventions.

Our Favorite Neck Pain Products

McKenzie Cervical/Neck Roll Pillow

McKenzie Cervical/Neck Roll Pillow

Content written by Dr. Keith Sparks, DC | Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS) Certified Exercise Trainer, Selective Functional Movement Assessment Certified (SFMA) Certified
Content reviewed by Dr. Rachel Sparks, DC | Motion Palpation Institute (MPI) Referral List Certified, Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy (MDT) Practitioner

View Citations and References

1 Morris CE, Bonnefin D, Darville C. The Torsional Upper Crossed Syndrome: A multi-planar update to Janda's model, with a case series introduction of the mid-pectoral fascial lesion as an associated etiological factor. J Bodyw Mov Ther. 2015;19(4):681-689. doi:10.1016/j.jbmt.2015.08.008

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Contact Us with Further Questions

If you are in the Wichita, KS, area and are having frustrations, complications, or stagnant results with care, then contact us for in-person help with our unique healthcare approaches. If you are not within the greater Wichita, KS metro, we have created amazing Telehealth and Video Programs to provide you the same high-quality care. Contact our professional chiropractic staff at our East Wichita clinic or West Wichita clinic about possible treatments for your muscle, joint, nutrition, and health-related concerns today.

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