Osteopathic Approach to Treating Headaches by Chloe Sardin
Chloe is our French osteopathic therapist. She wanted to share this story because it highlights how head pain occurring in one area may be caused by a problem somewhere else in the skull, neck or back. As osteopathic therapists, we’re always looking for connections that are not always obvious at first glance.
Here’s Charlie’s story:
Charlie had terrible headaches. They began suddenly three years ago. The pain seemed to start in his upper neck and then follow the bones of his skull from back to front. It finished in his left eye, causing redness and sensitivity in his eye.
As osteopaths we take a holistic approach when we look at people, which means I checked his whole body, from his spine to his organs. I discovered what people often refer to as a “trapped nerve.” This particular nerve, called the Arnold’s nerve, comes from high in the neck at the second cervical vertebra, which is the second vertebra down from your skull. It helps with neck movement and relays sensations from the scalp. There’s a condition called Arnold’s neuralgia in which a person feels pain and sensitivity in the eye when the problem is actually coming from the Arnold’s nerve in the upper neck – this is what Charlie was suffering from.
The job of an osteopathic therapist is to figure out what is being disturbed. Once we know that, we can facilitate the return of optimum health and flow to the patient’s body. Using my anatomical understanding combined with the sensitivity in my hands, I investigated all the spots that might be affected by the Arnold’s nerve in Charlie’s neck. First I checked his cranial rhythm, the subtle movement created by the pulse of the cerebrospinal fluid. Next I checked for tension in the tiny joints between his skull bones. Then I checked the muscles at the back of his head, and over his temples and forehead, and finally, I checked his sinuses.
I should also mention that we take headaches very seriously at The English Osteopaths. They can be an indication of a bad concussion, high blood pressure or sometimes even tumours in the skull. With thorough questioning we can figure out if we should refer a patient to his or her doctor. Luckily with Charlie there were no red flags.
There’s also a little known fact about headaches that we want to tell you about. The sacrum and the base of the skull are connected by a strong membrane that acts on the spine creating reciprocal tension on each end. So if you have a headache, your lower back, sacrum and tailbone should be checked. If your sacrum is jammed from something like a hard fall, the base of your skull will come under pressure, pulled by the injury to your tailbone, and this could result in a headache.
In Charlie’s case, the treatment I gave him didn’t only focus on his head and neck. There were also other areas in Charlie’s body that needed treatment, both for general health purposes and to keep his neck mobile.
When Charlie came back a few weeks later, he had only just started having minor headache pain. He had been pain free for almost three weeks! He was delighted. Since that second appointment he has had no pain. He can’t believe that a pain that had bothered him for three years could be dealt with so easily, and he wishes he had seen us earlier.
The English Osteopaths believe that if you give yourself the right environment in which to thrive, you will. Make an appointment to see us, and we’ll help you find that environment.
