Headaches from the neck
Cervicogenic headaches respond to targeted joint work and soft tissue release.
Some headaches are driven by the upper cervical joints and the muscles around them, and those are the ones that belong in this room. They have a pattern: they start at the neck or the base of the skull, they follow a hard day at a desk or a bad night's sleep, and reproducing them by pressing a specific segment is part of the exam.
c-05 / in your words
Do your headaches start here?
- 01It starts at the base of the skull and wraps forward over one eye
- 02Almost always the same side
- 03Neck stiffness comes first, the headache follows
- 04Worse on long screen days, better on days you moved
c-05 / how it is worked
The cervicogenic headache protocol
phase 01 / reproduce
Prove it is coming from the neck before treating the neck
Segmental testing through the upper cervical spine and palpation of the structures that refer into the head. If pressing a specific segment reproduces your headache, that is the finding. If we cannot reproduce it, we say so and you are not sold a plan.
phase 02 / release
Work the segment and the tissue around it
Targeted joint work at the level that reproduced it, plus soft tissue or dry needling into the suboccipitals and upper trapezius. Progress is judged against your own headache count for the week, not against how the neck feels on the table.
phase 03 / hold the position
Fix what keeps loading it
Screen hours, sleep position, and the mid-back range that decides how hard the upper neck has to work. This is the phase that decides whether the headaches come back in a month, so the home block is small enough to actually do.
what we test first
Upper cervical segmental testing, rotation measured on both sides, and palpation of the specific structures that refer into the head. If we cannot reproduce your headache from the neck, we say so.
how many visits
Four to six visits, and we judge it against your own headache count rather than against how the neck feels on the table.
when this is not ours
A sudden severe headache unlike any before it, or one with fever, visual loss, or neurological change, is an emergency and not something to book an assessment for.