Chiropractic Care for Headaches in Olympia, WA
Drug-free help for headaches that keep coming back, including the ones that start in your neck. Dr. Tim McConnell has treated headache patients in Olympia for more than 30 years.
Your Neck Is Often the Root Cause of Your Headache
When your head hurts, the neck is easy to overlook. For a lot of headache patients, though, that is where the trouble begins.
Your upper neck sits right next to the nerves that carry pain signals up into your head. When those joints lose their normal motion, or the muscles around them stay tight for too long, you get the kind of headache that keeps returning no matter how much ibuprofen you reach for.
Dr. Tim McConnell has worked with headache patients in Olympia since 1994. He starts every case by figuring out where the pain is really coming from. Skip that step and you end up doing what most people do, which is managing the same headache for years.
The Types of Headaches We Treat Most
Headaches come in different forms, and the right approach depends on what is actually driving yours. These are the types we work with most often at the clinic.
Tension-Type Headaches
These are the ones we see most at the clinic. They usually feel like a band of pressure across your forehead, or a tightness low at the back of your skull, and they tend to trace back to tense muscles in the neck and shoulders. A long stretch at the computer makes them worse. So does staring down at a phone.
Adjusting the neck and loosening those muscles takes the strain off the system that is generating the pain. Patients tend to notice the headaches showing up less often, too.
Cervicogenic Headaches
A cervicogenic headache comes straight from the neck, usually when a joint in the upper cervical spine stops moving the way it should. The pain often begins at the base of the skull and works its way forward, and it usually settles on one side. Many patients tell us it flares when they hold their head in one position too long, like during a long drive.
Because the cause here is mechanical, this is the type of headache that tends to respond well to hands-on chiropractic care.
Migraines
Migraines are more complicated, with brain chemistry and family history in the mix. Even so, the neck plays a part for plenty of people who get them. Tension and restricted movement up in the cervical spine can leave the nervous system more reactive, which makes it easier for a migraine to take hold.
Dr. McConnell is upfront that chiropractic care does not cure migraines. What it can do, for people whose migraines are tied to neck tension, is ease the strain feeding them. Those patients often find their attacks come around less frequently over time.
Stop guessing at what is causing your headaches.
Dr. McConnell will track down the source and tell you straight whether chiropractic can help. Same-day appointments available in Olympia and Lacey.
Signs Your Headache Starts in Your Neck
Not every headache traces back to the spine. These are the patterns that point us toward the neck:
- Pain that sits at the base of your skull and sometimes spreads behind your eyes
- Headaches that get worse after a long stretch at the computer
- A headache that is already there when you wake up, then loosens its grip as the day goes on
- One-sided headaches that no one has managed to put a clear diagnosis on
- Sore, knotted muscles in your neck and shoulders whenever the headache hits
- An old whiplash or neck injury in your history, even one from years back
- Headaches that shrug off medication but settle down with heat or a neck rub
If a few of those hit home, your neck is worth a look.
How Dr. McConnell Treats Headaches
Everything starts with an exam. Dr. McConnell will ask when the headaches show up and what seems to set them off. He will also want to hear about any past neck injury, including the kind of whiplash people tend to forget about years later.
When the neck turns out to be part of the picture, care usually involves gentle adjustments to the upper cervical spine. These restore motion to joints that have stiffened and calm the irritation around the nerves nearby. He fits the technique to the person in front of him, and for patients who do better with low-force methods like the Activator, he uses those instead.
Alongside the adjustments, he works on the muscles themselves, especially the small ones at the base of the skull that so often drive tension and cervicogenic headaches. He will also go through the daily habits that keep your headaches going, from how your desk is set up to the way you sleep, and help you change the ones that count.
He is upfront about what he thinks care can do for you and roughly how long it should take. And if your headaches are not a chiropractic problem, he will say so instead of stringing you along.
What Our Patients Say
A lot of our headache patients say the same thing. It was the first time someone connected their neck to their headaches and explained it in plain language. The relief came after that.
Dr. McConnell has practiced on Martin Way since 1996, and a good share of the people who come in for headaches were sent by a friend or family member he helped first.
Serving Olympia, Lacey, and the South Sound.
Where We Are
You will find Back in Action Chiropractic at 4324 Martin Way, Suite A, right next to Lowe’s in Olympia. Patients come to us from around the South Sound, Lacey and Tumwater included.
If you are tired of meeting every headache with another dose of medication and want to know what is causing them, we can help.