New guidance from the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) suggested headaches are not always correctly diagnosed or treated, with a significant minority of cases indicatiing that painkillers taken to reduce the pain could actually be causing it!
The NICE guidline highlighted that although common over-the-counter treatments tend to be effective for occasional headaches, in approximately two percent of cases headaches may be caused by the medication, in particular painkillers or triptan drugs taken for tension or migrine headaches occurring more often than 10 to 15 days a month. This most typically results from a cycle of taking more medication for frequent tension-type heaaches or migraines, which actually worsen the pain. The NICE guidlines aim to increase awareness of drug-induced headaches and empower healthcare professionals to recognise and manage the different types of headaches, with more effective, targeted treatments. Source: BMJ 2012;345:e6281 (www.bmj.com) NICE(www.nice.org.uk)
Trigger points in these areas can be easily and quickly located and ‘switched off’ by a professional registered massage therapist Under the skull is usually a good place to start to look for Trigger Points that can be the cause of the common tension headache. The suboccipitals are a small group that really have a lot of work to do, balancing your ‘bowling ball’ weight of a head on top of your spine. ………so give me one hour……