Headaches and other head symptoms

Most headaches are benign, but serious conditions often masquerade as innocent everyday pains. If you have head pain it’s important to see your doctor to rule out serious medical conditions that may be causing your headaches.

For the vast majority the cause of ongoing headache is benign, that is, they don’t pose a serious health risk, even though symptoms may wreak havoc on your quality of life. At Darwin Osteopathy we see a high rate of success in achieving long-term relief in most headache and migraine sufferers. 

Underlying factors contributing to headaches and migraines in an individual are often many. These can range from unchangeable factors such as your genetics and age, to difficult to change factors such as your job and family dynamics to more easily changeable factors such as your emotional, mental and physical habits.

These changeable factors are associated with increased pressure being placed on brain, head and/or neck tissues. Excessive pressure generated by one or more of the many muscles that attach to your head is a very common and frequently overlooked source of headaches. Compression of nerves in the upper neck can lead to pain radiating into the head. Irritation of cranial nerves closely asociated with the jaw can lead to face and head pain, ringing in the ears (tinnitus), dizziness (vertigo) and a wide range of other symptoms. Increased pressure within your head, called intra-cranial pressure, is a potential source of pain and a variety of symptoms related to how you inadvertently mis-use your body.

Using precise and effective Osteopathic techniques that address significant tissue sources of your headaches, migraine and other head symptoms alongside identifying and managing relevant contributing factors, even if you've had them for years or decades, you too could be headache/migraine free.

  • tension headache;

  • neck generated (cervicogenic) headache;
  • migraine;
  • childhood migraine;
  • cranial nerve irritation (e.g. trigeminal and facial neuralgia);
  • benign positional vertigo (dizziness);
  • tinnitus (ringing in the ear);
  • sinusitis;
  • TMJ (temporomandibular or jaw joint) syndrome;
  • dental conditions.