The Necks Involvement with Migraines and Headaches

According to the diagnostic guidelines governing current medical practice, you can’t diagnose migraine, tension headache or cluster headache unless all other known causes for the symptoms are excluded.

​Canadian researcher Peter Rothbart examined over 800 cases of migraine, tension headache and cluster headache in a single year. Using the Gold standard anaesthetic blocks to exclude the neck, Rothbart found that 80% had cervicogenic headache.

In other words 80% had clear signs that the neck was driving symptoms that appeared to be migraine, tension-type headache or cluster headache.

The question then, is how has your neck been excluded? Has it been excluded by a therapist who specialises in the role of the neck in migraine, or has it been ‘excluded’ by someone who doesn’t believe it plays a role anyway?