Neck/Shoulder Pain & Headache Relief Through Gentle Acupuncture
Release tension, calm the nervous system, and restore clarity.
Occasionally, I am seeing those patients who are complaining the neck pain & shoulder pain in my daily practice. It was a common disorder. However, lots of patients are suffering for a while, and then they didn’t know why they have neck pain and shoulder pain. Therefore, I would like to explain why the patients are suffering the neck pain & shoulder pain.
Section 1 – Why Neck Pain Causes Headaches
In my daily practice, I am frequently seeing those patients who are complaining the headache. The area of headache may be various depending upon the damage areas.
As you can see from above diagram, the yellow lines are the cervical nerves from the cervical spinal codes. Those nerves should be freely sending the nerve impulse from the brain to the target muscles and/or areas for sensory purpose or motor purpose.
By the various reasons such as jamming cervical nerves caused by muscle spasming/tightness and/or inflammation of local tissues leading to the irritation of nerves on the neck, the patients may be complaining the headache on the areas of temporal area, occipital area, and forehead area. It is called as the Cervicogenic Headache.
Neck tension can irritate nerves and restrict blood flow, leading to:
- Tension headaches
- Cervicogenic headaches
- Stress‑related headaches
- Migraines triggered by muscle tightness
Tension headache and Stress-related headache are coming from similar reasons.
If you have stress, most of people are doing certain behaviour such as crunching jaw and grinding teeth, especially, at night time when they are sleeping. If you are doing crunching jaw and grinding teeth, those behaviours would be damaging your teeth such as cracking teeth, and TMJ(Temporo-Mandibular Joint). Furthermore, those behaviours may cause the Temporalis and Masseter muscles spasming, tightening-up, and then they are not relaxed. So you’ll feel headache called as Tension headache and Stress-related headache.