Headache

Headache can be caused by various reasons including neck pain as I have been previously discussing. If this is the reason for that pain then the neck problem and any other imbalances in the muscular skeletal system need to be dealt with as well as the headache, however this is not the only cause of headache as I will explain.
The pain from headache can be caused by an internal imbalance or external. There are various types of headache and to some degree need to be addressed slightly differently however as mentioned previously the most important point is the underlying cause, rectify that and the issue will be resolved.

Tension headaches
These may be one of the more common types of headache, those who are under a lot of stress I'm sure may be familiar with this type of headache. Contraction of the muscles in the head and neck may lead to this type of headache.

Vascular
These are when there is contraction of the blood vessels, these headaches are commonly associated with migraine, they may cause mild to severe pain along with a number of other associated symptoms.
Headaches experienced when one has a fever or high blood pressure can also be vascular.

Traction or inflammatory
From things like sinus infection or more serious conditions such as stroke.

Acupuncture and Chinese medicine can be helpful for this condition but it is important to consult a therapist to help you determine the underlying problem.

Treatment for this condition varies, it could be something as simple as have a few days break to relieve stress or longer term program to correct a more chronic situation if it exists.

Self help.

As I have mentioned before trigger points may be very useful in cases where the headache is just caused by tension. The points I have already mentioned for neck pain can be used as well, apply 3 to 5 minutes of sustained pressure to these points to activate them.
Other points that may be helpful are indicated as follows;

This point is helpful when you have difficulty sleeping, headache associated with an empty sensation

Apply sustained pressure or massage this point for headache in your temple area, the side of your head or headaches that affect your eyes

in combination with the above

Use this point with headache that affects your neck and back part of you shoulder

Hope you find these helpful, leave a comment or question if you have one.

Neck pain self help

Well the neck pain cases are still rolling in. Here's a couple of simple things you can do if you are also someone who's suffering from neck and shoulder pain.
Firstly try to take notice of what aggravates the pain whether that be movement in a certain direction, worse on a cold day, worse when you are lying down and better when you are standing or sitting, worse when you apply pressure to the area.
What makes it feel better ? nothing ? applying pressure ?, maybe applying heat or cold ?
Avoid what aggravates it do more of what makes it feel better. This in itself may sound silly but may surprise you how it can speed up the healing process. It's not always advisable to think that you can just work through it, it all comes down to a matter of degree.

Try these for stiffness in your neck sore shoulders or just plain tiredness.

Just bring your arm across the front of your body placing your hand on the top your shoulder about midway between your neck and the tip of your shoulder, there is generally a sensitive point there. Apply pressure with your middle finger as you elevate your shoulder, breathe in as you are doing it, holing your shoulder in the elevated position 3 seconds then relax your shoulders suddenly. repeat 2 or 3 times.





 Bring both hands up behind the back of your head,
Run your thumbs up the back of your neck till you come to the edge of the bone at the base of your skull
where are two slight hollows let your thumbs slide into these up to the edge of the bone at the base of your skull.
While applying light pressure to these points move your head back and forward, side to side and then rotate it . This will help to relieve tension in your head, neck and shoulders. These points are also very good if you have headache, sore eyes, tiredness, light headed.

 Hope these help, give it a try. More help here

Trigger points for relief

In the last couple of posts I have been talking quite a bit about neck and shoulder pain as this is something I get a lot in the clinic and I feel the more everyone understand the process of how it comes about hopefully you will learn how you can undo the process.

One way many therapists will treat not only neck and shoulder pain but also pain in other areas of the body is by using trigger points. These points will often appear in muscle areas adjacent to or sometimes quite a distance from the actual region of pain. For shoulder pain for example these points may appear in the forearm upper arm chest or further down the back. this will vary depending on the pain or injury region.

If the therapist does acupuncture these points can be needled but if you are wanting to give yourself a little self help and find a point that you find is very sensitive or even painful to the touch but is away from the site of injury try applying sustained pressure to the point. The pain can be reasonably intense to begin with but should diminish with continued application of pressure to the point.
In many cases assuming you have found the right spot the pain at that spot will diminish and you will feel relief quite quickly at the injury site.

Remember sustained pressure produces the best results with trigger points

As you can see in the diagram to the right the shaded area shows the area of pain, not only in the upper arm but also in the lower arm below the elbow.
In this case the trigger point is shown to be the triangle on the lower part of the shoulder blade.

So next time you have shoulder or neck pain or something like tennis or golfers elbow, repetitive strain injury, or even headache give it a try it usually works well.

You can read more about improving your body balance here

Neck and shoulder pain

In the last post with regards to neck pain I mentioned about body imbalances and how important it is to find where your body imbalances are and if you want lasting relief from not just neck and shoulder pain but the majority of muscular- skeletal problems they need to be corrected.

Just yesterday a women came to me as a referral from her doctor for neck pain. She explained it had happened suddenly out of the blue for no apparent reason, not so.

After inquiring about her history she revealed she had had a herniated disc in her lower back about 6 years ago, An imbalance to cause the herniated disc could have been there for years before the herniated disc occurred.

After checking her posture I could see that she was quite rounded in the shoulders and her head was tilted forward . This forward tilting is a classic case for causing neck and upper back pain and typically comes about through sitting in a slouched position. Having said that I suspect she still has imbalance in the lower body that needs correcting.

Your back has a natural curvature, if this curvature becomes excessive it is generally caused by muscles being too tight in some areas and slack in others. Check your posture in the mirror you may pick up things you haven’t noticed before.

Shoulder and neck pain

Over the past few several weeks at least I've been treating a lot of people with shoulder and neck pain. many of those cases have come about through injury, some waking up with a sore neck and others just with an ongoing neck problem.
While acupuncture is good for this type of problem treatment can take some time and it can be hard for the person having to deal with pain and often not getting a good nights sleep.
Like many muscular-skeletal conditions but especially with those persons with ongoing problems it's important to remember the pain is there for a reason and to eliminate it completely you must correct the underlying cause.
A lot of these problems are brought about by lifestyle, think about what you do everyday, how much repeatative movement do you do every day, is that movement the same day in day out.

I'm not suggestion you give up what you are doing to avoid this but, this type of repetition can lead to some real problems if left long enough.

What aggravates your condition and what relieves it, do more of that which relieves and less of what aggravates it. This may sound like common sence but therapists often hear things like "oh I'd just thought I could run through it ", right.

The image to the right shows the effect an imbalance of the lower body can have on the upper. In the image on the left it wouldn't be uncommon to find the neck tilted slightly to the left as a natural compensatory measure by the body to stay in balance, this could lead to any number of ongoing problems ranging from back ache to neck ache shoulder pain and headaches.
This could become a chronic situation but can be rectified
Treatment for this is important especially if it becomes chronic.
As a individual you can do a number of things to prevent such an imbalance taking place in the first place

• stay flexible ( stretching both sides of the body in the above case probably wouldn't rectify the problem
• when exercising do both sides, eg if you play golf practice swinging in the opposite direction this will help counter the one sided movement.
• if you do only running or walking also do some upper body exercise.

 One of the therapies I use in my practice is Soseitai this ia a Japanese method of therapy  in which Sotai is a part, this method works on the law of reciprocal effect, there is an explanation of this method on my site or a very good one here



feel free to leave a comment or ask a question.

Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine

Today is my first post for this blog, and the first thing I'd like to talk about is when should you use complimentary medicine.
In general it seems we are brought up in most cases to thinking that we should go down the conventional medicine path when we have a health issue, but as time moves on more and more people are thinking about and using complementary or alternatives to conventional med.
Whether this is to avoid side effects or just because they don't like taking pills is really up to the individual.

From a complimentary therapist point of view this is great to see but it is still important to know when and whats the best way to get the best out of each method as there are both advantages and disadvantages to using both conventional and alternative. You may agree or disagree with the following:

• Conventional advantage  
• convenience 
• for serious acute onset  conditions
• life threatening conditions 
• accident and serious injury

• Disadvantage
• side effects (sometimes serious)
• poor effect on long term or chronic conditions (depending on condition)

• Alternative
• few or no side effects in most instaces
• good for maintaining good health
• effective for chronic conditions
• can be prescribed according to the patient and the patients condition not just label

• Disadvantage
•  not as user friendly although now with some pills tablets and granule formulation better.
• takes time

 The above diagram indicates the areas where Chinese medicine mostly deals with as oppose to Western medicine at the other end of the continuum.




People in general try to manage their health by themselves until a problem becomes persistent enough for them to seek help.
Assuming there are no red flags ( indicators of a more serious condition) a person seeking help in many cases may receive what maybe considered fairly heavy duty medication for rather mild conditions. This is also a matter of degree and should be considered when seeking help. Assuming you seek a qualified complimentary or alternative medicine practitioner they should have the training and enough knowledge to know they should refer on if there is no improvement in a condition or red flags appear

• Alternative medicine works well when applied correctly
• Learn which conditions respond well with which type of treatment and what works best for you.
• Seek help early if using alternative medicine if the condition persists with treatment or worsens you have the option to move on to Western methods if required.
• Both Eastern and Western methods can work complimentary to each other and depending on the case may enhance treatment for a better outcome.

Seek advice if self medicating even with herbal medicine