Headaches seem to constantly be in the news.
In an issue of Parade, the Sunday newspaper magazine, Dr. Max Murray Braff, M.D., director of New York’s Stuyvesant Polyclinic Headache Clinic, challenged the concept that most headaches are emotional in origin.
In his article describing a study of 3,000 patients over a period of 18 years, Dr. Braff reported that in over 90 percent of these cases he found that headache was “a referred symptom caused by mechanical derangement of the cervical spine which in turn produces irritation of one or more of the cervical nerve roots and/or intermittent compression of the vertebral artery.”
Of course, what Dr. Braff is saying, in plain language, is that nine of ten headaches are due to spinal misalignments.
I think the proof of the pudding comes when you see the results that can be obtained in treating a person with a headache problem.
Doctors of chiropractic are often asked by patients about the emotional aspects of headaches. I know of an individual whose comment was essentially… “Doctor, I’ve been told headaches are caused by emotional problems but I don’t consider myself a person who is easily flustered or under great pressure.”
The Doctor of Chiropractic’s answer to the patient was simply that his problem was not emotional but “mechanical.” And mechanical problems can be corrected with the proper treatment and care…it’s as simple as that.
And I would like to warn headache sufferers who rely on pills and painkillers that a headache tablet relieves only temporarily, a headache. When you come right down to it, they’re a poor substitute for what the person with a headache is really after: An end to the headaches, once and for all!