Why Haven’t Headache Sufferers Been Told This Fact?

In 1983, Dr. Ottar Sjaastad, a Norwegian medical doctor almost changed the game when it came to managing and helping you with your headaches.

Almost?

Simply put, this information has never become part of the mainstream solution leaving millions of headache sufferers left to deal with their pain. Despite the absolute brilliance of his discovery, most practitioners (medical and non-medical) are STILL not applying his findings to help their patients.

Why Should You Care About This?

As a previous headache suffer, I wouldn’t be surprised if no one had ever shared these facts or maybe you’ve heard it all before but never been given a way to apply it.

To start, your headaches are rarely caused by one single thing. It’s usually a combination of many things like stress, dehydration, poor blood flow to your head, lack of sleep and a myriad of other factors that can contribute to your debilitating headaches.

This fact alone makes diagnosing and treating your headaches successfully, a painstakingly difficult process for any healthcare provider, leaving you with no relief and a horrible nightmare that continues without hope.

What Was This Great Discovery?

Dr. Sjasstad discovered something that every headache sufferer, whether migraine, tension, cluster, primary, secondary, has in common…that the structures of the neck play a pivotal role in the severity and cause of your headache.

More specifically, unless your headache was caused by an emergency, you probably have these three things going on in your neck.

1. Normal Imaging
2. Postural Distortions
3. Immobile Spinal Segments

It means that every time you have a headache, if you just made sure the structures of your neck were healthy (more on this shortly) you could fix your headache totally, or at minimum, make it feel better.

This also means that you’ve probably never looked close enough at your neck for a potential solution.

If you’ve ever been to your medical doctor regarding your headaches, you likely had x-rays, MRI’s, CT scans or other diagnostic imaging that ALL had come back negative. This means that you had Normal Imaging.

Your medical provider did their job…they made sure there was no emergency causing your headaches but this still left you frustrated and most likely medicated.

The reason, as Dr. Sjasstad discovered, that no cause for your headaches could be found is because the headache has little to do with your head (what x-rays, CT’s and MRI’s measure) and everything to do with your neck.

You may have slipped through the cracks, but you know as well as I do, your headaches are very real.

Another result from Sjasstad’s findings was that Postural Distortions can play a significant role in your headaches.

He reported that the further the head moved forward (anterior) over the body the worse the headache became in 67% of his patients. This condition is also known as Anterior Spinal Distortion and is a major focus for a Life By Design Chiropractor.

One more condition worth noting was that many headaches sufferers demonstrated the presence of Immobile Spinal Segments.

This means that the vertebra that make up your neck don’t fully move in all directions that they should. The result is irritated and inflamed joints as well as dysfunction with the spinal cord itself. [Remember…your spinal cord makes up the major communication system for your entire body and any neurological problem could mean collateral damage to the rest of your body]

To Help Your Headaches – Test Your Neck

If you weren’t aware that a neck problem may be contributing to your headaches or you have never had any tests done on your neck, change that quickly.

Let me help by giving you a gift. This is our FREE Posture Self Assessment Tool. It will help you complete a preliminary check to look for Postural Distortions on your own.

This tool will help you see if you have, as Dr. Sjasstand noted, a “spinal distortion”.

Can You Fix Poor Posture?

Yes, it is possible to fix poor posture, but it takes more than just exercises or sitting up straight. To actually fix someones poor neck posture you must correct the structure. This is an extremely important point, as posture is what we see on the outside of your body but it’s structure that is at the root of your postural problems.

To properly correct structure you must restore function to the deepest parts of the neck including the vertebra, ligaments, muscles and nerves.

Let me give you an example of a case from Extraordinary Life Chiropractic of someone who underwent Bio-Structural Restoration using The Life By Design Chiropractic Method™.

This is Ann and she was kind enough to let us share her story.

Look at the Structural Image (the one on the left) that was taken when Ann came into the practice. Her head was 5” forward based on our system of analysis. As you can imagine, she had migraine headaches that she’d been dealing with for years and now they were affecting her focus, concentration and energy.

Now take a look at the Structural Image on the right. Do you see how her posture has drastically improved? In fact, what began as a 5” Anterior Spinal Distortion is now less than 2”. Her changing posture is a positive side effect of her deeper structure being corrected and now Ann is also experiencing less migraine headaches, more energy and even a boost in her immunity.

As you can tell by looking at the picture, Ann was active, but it wasn’t until we completed a full examination and discovered a problem with the deeper structures of her neck (nerve system, ligaments and muscles) that things changed and her headaches got better.

You also might be thinking “I don’t have bad posture and I still have headaches?”

That is very possible. Remember bad posture is just the second of Dr. Sjasstad’s findings. There is also a third: Immobile Spinal Segments.

Immobile Spinal Segments are individual parts of your spine that don’t move properly.

Immobile Spinal Segments are another condition we test for to determine a possible problem with the neck. Advanced technology called Electromyography (which is non-painful and non-invasive) is used to analyze nerve activity in the small muscles that surround every vertebra in your neck.

The results from this examination will demonstrate how much activity the brain is using to support a distorted spine. The more distorted the structure, the more energy the brain must generate to stop the spine from moving further from it’s normal. This leads to fatigued and irritated muscles as well as blood flow changes in the head and face region.

With proper technology and understanding of the unique conditions that exist in headache sufferers, our team can develop a clear understanding of the many possible deeper issues at the root your headaches.

More importantly, we know exactly what action to take in order to fix immobile spinal segments and structural distortions. This alone could make ALL the difference to your headaches.

But My Neck Doesn’t Hurt?

The saddest part about Immobile Spinal Segments and Anterior Spinal Distortion is these conditions don’t always cause pain. This means they can be happening right now and you won’t feel a thing. If you recall, Dr. Sjasstad’s first finding was “Normal Imaging”, which means that your neck could feel fine, but the proper tests could still detect a problem.

If you haven’t quite figured it out by now, the doctors that make up our team are not Traditional Chiropractors, they are Life By Design Chiropractors.

A Life By Design Chiropractor analyzes spinal structure for potential problems and using our unique corrective approach, fixes Immobile Spinal Segments and Anterior Spinal Distortion that could be at the core of your headache dilemma.

Action Steps

Take full advantage of the FREE Posture Self-Assessment Tool. This tool, at the very least, will put you on the right track to see if you have a problem with your neck that could be at the root of your headaches or just making your headaches worse.

If you would like to schedule a case review with one of our doctors or learn more about Bio-Structural Restoration call our office at (226) 367.0109.

The one thing I DON’T want you to do is nothing. If you suffer from headaches and you’ve ruled out any emergency cause, there’s a tremendous chance you HAVE something wrong with your neck. Please do something about it.

Dr. Jamie Richards

I’m Jamie and I’m obsessed with health, passionate about maximizing performance and love being an expert in Bio-Structural Restoration™. As the CEO and founder of Life By Design Inc. I have the drive to lead our community toward extraordinary lives. I am in love with my wife, Dana, daughters Andie & Scottie, I’m fanatical about modern design, and I’m deeply committed to the pursuit of a happy life.