Summary
The most common type of headache is the chronic tension type, with the most common cause thought to be trigger points in the muscles of the head and neck. These are the tender lumps within tight bands of muscles that masseurs love to find. To investigate this researchers obtained 31 patients from an outpatient clinic at a medical college. All had suffered headaches for at least three days a week over the previous four weeks. In their initial assessments the researchers found that every one had been prescribed anti depressant drugs as treatment (but obviously still suffered headaches). These sufferers were examined for trigger points in the muscles of the head, neck and shoulders. Following the treatment of these trigger points the average intensity of the headaches decreased from 7.28 to 1.65 on a 0-10 scale, and 52% had complete relief.
Clinical comments
The research clearly shows that the major cause of these headaches are trigger points, therefore all these should always be considered. The treatment of trigger points is discussed elsewhere on this website The fact that every suffer the researchers received from the medical university outpatient department had been prescribed anti-depressant drugs (and were still in them in spite of them not providing relief) is terrible.
Practical advice
If you have headaches they should be diagnosed by a qualified heath care professional. However, as shown by this research a common cause is often overlooked, and inappropriate drugs are prescribed. Given this, an option would be to download a copy of the practitioner version of this research summary using the following link and discuss it with your health care provider. Download
