If you are a migraine sufferer, you have no doubt heard of Imitrex and other headache medications. These medications act on certain receptors in our brain that cause the blood vessels to narrow, reduces pain signals, decrease nausea and can reduce sensitivity to light and sound.
These all sound great! Right?
But according to rxlist.com, it can also CAUSE: sudden, severe stomach pain, diarrhea with or without the presence of blood, severe chest pain, pain in your jaw or shoulder, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeats, seizure (convulsions), leg cramps, numbness or tingling in your legs or feet, burning pain in your legs or feet, cold feeling in your legs or feet, color changes in your legs or feet, hip pain, nausea, vomiting, sweating or shivering, agitation, hallucinations, fever, muscle stiffness, loss of coordination, sudden numbness or weakness on one side of the body, slurred speech, difficulty seeing, poor balance, and sudden severe headache.
Medication also does not address the root cause of the headaches or migraines.
I’ll be the first to tell you that I rarely get migraines. In the rare case that I do, the symptoms are typically only visual, and I have no pain. So, I am not writing this blog from the standpoint of a migraine sufferer but rather as a provider that has helped many patients find relief from their migraines and headaches without the dependence on medications or preventative injections.
As a chiropractor, we are looking for the actual cause of the migraine. We ask questions like why would the blood vessel need to ‘narrowed’, or why is it dilated? Where is the migraine pain located? Where did it start? When did it start? What activities tend to trigger them? What other symptoms are associated?
After we know the answers to those questions, we measure the actual function of the system that controls the blood vessels, the pain response, the digestive tract and our senses of sound and sight. All of those functions are control by one master controller, it is called the nervous system.
By evaluating the balance and function of the nervous system we can often identify the true cause of the migraines and work to correct the problem.
If you are like any of the patients we have helped before…you probably think that sounds nice but are not yet convinced it can be done. I get that…but I don’t accept it.
Either way, what do you have to lose? Besides the migraine…