Headaches are common. But common doesn’t mean normal for the human body, and it certainly doesn’t mean you have to live with them. Research shows that 38% of people experience tension-type headaches in any given year. Of those, 8.3% lose workdays entirely, and 43.6% report reduced effectiveness at work, home, or school.
The cost of lost productivity and treatment is estimated to be in the billions of dollars annually. If persistent headaches are affecting your quality of life, a headache and migraine chiropractor in Melbourne can help you understand what’s driving them and what to do about them.
Headaches begin when the blood vessels and nerves entering your skull become irritated.
The onset of headaches can have many contributing factors, such as:
These factors can often cause or aggravate Vertebral Subluxations — a condition that affects the movement of your spine and ultimately the surrounding nerves, which travel back into the skull. When those nerves are compressed or irritated, the result is often a headache.
Your cervical spine, the seven vertebrae in your neck, is one of the most common origins
of headache pain. The nerve roots that exit the upper cervical spine are in direct proximity
to the structures of the skull. Research has shown that stimulating these nerve roots can
reliably trigger headache symptoms.
It doesn’t stop there. The muscles, ligaments, and connective tissue of the neck also play
a significant role. Chronic tension in the suboccipital muscles — the small muscles at the
base of your skull — is a well-documented source of referred head pain.
The upper cervical joints (C1–C3) share neural pathways with the trigeminal nerve —
The primary sensory nerve of the face and head. When these joints are restricted or irritated,
pain can refer forward into the temples, behind the eyes, and across the forehead.
This is the anatomical basis for cervicogenic headache: head pain that originates
from the cervical spine, not the brain. It’s one of the most underdiagnosed and overmedicated
headache types — and one of the most responsive to chiropractic care when correctly identified.
Cervicogenic headaches originate from dysfunction in the joints, muscles, or soft tissues of the cervical spine. Pain is typically one-sided and often accompanied by neck stiffness or restricted movement. Because the symptoms can mimic migraines, they are frequently misdiagnosed and mistreated. A precise spinal assessment is essential to tell them apart.
Also known as medication-overuse headache, rebound headaches are caused by the frequent use or withdrawal of pain-relief medication. If you find yourself reaching for pain tablets regularly, it’s worth exploring whether there’s an underlying spinal cause that can be addressed directly.
Headaches and migraines present differently from person to person. If you’re experiencing any of the following, a chiropractic assessment may help identify the underlying cause:
Even though drugs may help temporarily relieve your symptoms, it is important to understand that they do not treat the root cause of headaches. Suppressing your symptoms with medication may also cause undesired side effects in the long run and can be harmful to organs like the liver and kidneys.
If your headaches are recurring — weekly, daily, or triggered by predictable activities — that pattern is telling you something. The goal at My Chiropractic Place is to understand what that is and to reduce your reliance on medication by identifying and correcting the underlying cause.
Dr Nam Nguyen and Dr David Addie bring a combined 49 years of clinical experience to every assessment. They take the time to understand your specific headache pattern before recommending anything.
Here’s how your first visit typically unfolds:
Your assessment starts with a detailed conversation. Our chiropractor will ask about your headache pattern: how often they occur, how long they last, where the pain sits, what triggers them, and what makes them worse or better. Your posture, work setup, sleep, stress levels, and current medications are all relevant. Nothing is rushed.
Once your history is clear, a thorough spinal examination follows. Using the Gonstead Technique, your chiropractor analyses your posture, assesses joint movement through motion and static palpation, and uses Nervoscope instrumentation to detect areas of nerve irritation along the spine. An X-ray may be taken if clinically indicated. The aim is to identify the precise spinal level contributing to your headaches — not to apply a generalised adjustment and hope for the best.
The best care for headaches is to not get them in the first place!
Your chiropractor can help you assess your lifestyle factors and provide specific advice to help you prevent headaches from appearing in the future.
Getting checked regularly for vertebral subluxations is essential in reducing nervous system stress as part of your preventative approach to managing your headaches.
In the meantime, these practical habits support headache prevention:
My Chiropractic Place has two Melbourne clinics — in Richmond, inner Melbourne, and Caroline Springs, in Melbourne’s western suburbs. Both clinics offer Gonstead assessment and individualised care for headaches, migraines, and related neck conditions.
Dr Nam Nguyen has been serving the Richmond community since 2005 and was the first chiropractor to establish a practice in Caroline Springs when the clinic opened there in 2007. Between them, Dr Nguyen and Dr Addie have provided chiropractic care to Melbourne families for nearly five decades.
The clinics are deliberately kept accessible — appointments are available without long waits, and you can contact your practitioner directly with questions. If you’re looking for a headache and migraine chiropractor near you in Melbourne, both locations are accepting new patients.
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