At some point or another, we have all experienced some form of headache. While there are many different causes for headaches to be triggered, the trickle down affects can impact your daily living in a very negative way. It can cause you to loose sleep, muscles can stiffen and restrict mobility, you can lose focus at your daily tasks and you can be more easily irritated. While there are many options out there to help manage your symptoms, massage therapy has been proven to be very effective in managing headaches and their effects.
Tension-Type Headaches: probably one of the most common complaints of clients seeking relief through massage. With a soft tissue injury or stress, the muscles in the neck and shoulders tend to stiffen, which in turn restricts mobility and cause muscle knots. The trigger points (knots) can cause a referral pattern that could be the source of your pain. Massage can help alleviate the muscle tension, and when combined with therapeutic exercises can reduce the severity and frequency of your headaches.
Migraines: a more severe and chronic state of headaches with more problematic symptoms (aura's, additional sensitivities, etc.). These symptoms can be so intense that people sometimes need complete silence and darkness so that it will pass, which can cause a lot of disturbances in your daily routine. Massage that is targeted to reduce muscle tension in the neck and shoulders and simulate the parasympathetic nervous system (to help relax), can help get migraine symptoms to a more manageable state.
Post-Concussion Headaches: following an injury to the head or neck, the tissues can be quite sensitive and irritated. This is mainly the case when someone experiences whiplash, when the head and neck are thrown around in one or multiple directions very quickly. The muscles surrounding the neck and shoulders can be swollen and strained. This added pressure can cause headache symptoms. When a massage that is focuses on relaxing the muscles with gentle techniques, promoting lymphatic drainage, with a possible cold therapy application can speed up the recovery time for the soft tissues.
*With any sort of head injury it is critical that you get clearance from your doctor or other health professional to ensure that the manual techniques of massage therapy can be safely applied without causing more damage or irritation (ie. if the nerves are damaged)
Headaches can have a rather significant impact on your life. As more information about the effects of massage therapy become available, more people are turning to RMTs for assistance with getting their symptoms under control.
Thank you for stopping by and I hope you have a great day!!
Reference:
Massage Therapy For Headaches. (2020, September 25). Retrieved September 29, 2020, from https://rmtao.com/blog/massage-therapy-for-headaches?fbclid=IwAR0DK3yTPsPhWpxIXEhQhkgS-X1fe4zjVlcdmBxZXdVK7BfAwBGXpSiIMhU
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