Headache Relief: “The Missing Pieces”
How a few small changes can prevent 98% of your chronic headaches!
By Thomas Cobb
Dear Chronic Headache Sufferer:
What you are about to read is a snapshot of over 30 years of intensive research, testing, and real-life, in-the-trenches experience training people with chronic headaches.
In the beginning, this information was only available to clients of the pain programs where I worked as the clinical director or in my private practice.
The temptation when you first read a report like this is to scan through it quickly and then set it aside. Sure, you intend to come back to it later, but how often does that really happen?
That’s why I strongly urge you to stop what you’re doing and read this report immediately. Whether you’ve had headaches for months, years or decades I suspect that at least one of my “Missing Pieces to Headache Relief” will strike a chord with you.
With that said, let me ask you a question…
Are You Sick of Having Headaches?
I mean it…are you sick and tired of doing what your doctor tells you or looking for relief on your own only to continue to have those debilitating headaches at the exact moment you were hoping to get relief?
Or worse, are you sick of having friends and family upset with you for canceling yet another planned activity?
Have you lost confidence in your health care professional because what they recommend just isn’t working? Or worse, feel badly about yourself because your body isn’t responding to treatment or medication recommendations?
Is any of this sounding familiar?
Why Treatment Options from Your Doctor are Not Working
If it seems like the choices you have been given to get headache relief aren’t working there’s a good reason…
Fact:
Doctors generally only offer medication or surgery for headache relief and prevention and will rarely refer you to other treatment modalities unless they have exhausted their list of medicines. Even then they may not know of a good multimodality resource to which they can refer you.
To maximize your chances for headache relief AND prevention, you must have a system that goes beyond just medicine. Whether you suffer from chronic migraines, tension headaches or mixed headaches, most doctors can only respond with more or different medicines as the treatment of choice. And that is usually it!
If you are someone who has followed your doctor’s advice and are still having chronic headaches, the solutions you were offered weren’t successful and you are left wondering why, or what’s next or even wondering what is wrong with you.
Genetics do not doom you to a lifetime of headaches.
First, you may definitely have a genetic predisposition to headaches. You know that if headaches run in your family and you now have headaches you may be susceptible to headaches because of genetic factors.
It is tough and usually discouraging when you have been told that you have headaches because of your family history. It can feel like a prison sentence without parole. Just because your mom had headaches, are you destined to have them too? While genetics can make you more vulnerable to having headaches, having a genetic predisposition to headaches is not the end of the story.
If you were just a victim to your genes, your earliest memories would include headaches. Instead, it’s likely your headaches started at some point in your life and they have gotten worse over time.
If genetics were the only factor, you would not see this pattern. What you would see is always having had headaches and they would stay about the same in frequency and duration and severity throughout your lifetime.
Since you have seen them start at a certain point in your life and you have seen them get worse, this points to the fact that other factors play a role in triggering your headaches and continue to play a role in triggering your headaches over time.
These other factors are hidden triggers. These are triggers present in your body and lifestyle that you may not be aware of but which exploit your genetic vulnerability and trigger headaches.
It’s all about the hidden triggers!
Seems obvious doesn’t it? I’m sure you can list several things that you know can trigger a headache for you.
Every chronic headache sufferer knows there are certain things that can trigger headaches. Things like dietary allergens, chemicals, certain smells, stress, caffeine, strong emotions, fatigue, menstrual periods and even barometric pressure.
What is not commonly known is there are other triggers that you may not know about or don’t know how to deal with effectively that make you significantly more vulnerable to headaches.
But when you look at chronic headaches, it’s not the triggers you are already know about, but it is the triggers that you are not aware of that we are interested in. You can become conscious of (or aware of) the triggers that you are currently don’t know exist or don’t realize the importance of. Where do these come from? How do you make them conscious?
But by reducing these hidden triggers, even your vulnerability to already known triggers like changes in barometric pressure or a menstrual period can be significantly reduced.
These hidden triggers do not respond to medication or other outside agents. But, you can become aware of these triggers in your body and learn how to change or eliminate them.
If you are not actively engaged in discovering your hidden triggers and making changes in how you respond to them you are not achieving the reduction in your headaches that is possible. If you are discouraged hoping things will change you just don’t have the information you need to make the difference.
Waiting for the next new drug isn’t just boring and unproductive, it’s also dangerous. You see, unless you’re able to find a reliable method to reduce or prevent your headaches you can see your heath, lifestyle and your well-being deteriorate.
I have another question for you…
Are You Active or Passive?
There are two ways of dealing with chronic headaches that are diametrically opposed to one another: active or passive.
When you are in “active seeker mode” you are looking for something that can help. You refuse to accept that there is nothing you can do to improve your quality of life and reduce your headaches. You look for possibilities that resonate with your experience and validate your common sense. You can see that since your headaches aren’t there ALL the time, there must be something that you are unaware of that triggers them.
If you are an active searcher you are able to keep a positive attitude and proclaim “these things I’ve tried just don’t work, there must be another way’”.
But with ongoing headaches it’s easy to slip into “passive seeker mode” where you are not only discouraged but may even be convinced that a life with headaches is what you have to accept. You may feel held hostage by the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical companies.
Don’t worry…you’re not alone!
This brings me to the first Missing Piece for Headache Relief and Prevention”…
Missing Piece #1
Muscles Develop Habits that Trigger Headaches
When a muscle is working to move your body it contracts; that is just how it works. Tension in a muscle is when the muscle is working but doesn’t need to move any part of the body; the unecessary muscle activity keeps it partially contracted and that means the muscle fibers that are working and are shorter than they would be if they were relaxed. Because the muscle is partially contracted with tension, over time the muscle fibers actually get shorter and shorter and hold more and more tension. And (this is important), you can be completely unaware that this is happening!
Okay, stay with me here for the next point in our biology lesson. There is a thin layer of connective tissue that holds the muscle fibers together called the “fascia”. But, unless you are a dancer, athlete or physical therapist you may not know that the fascia will shorten or shrink to conform to the shortened muscle fibers. This then, becomes a major problem.
The way your body works is amazing but sometimes it works against you. You have heard the phrase “use it or lose it”. Your body is very efficient. If your muscles become shortened due to unnecessary tension, the body shrinks the fascia because it doesn’t need to be longer than the shortened muscle fibers and this becomes the new normal.
But, now you have a situation where the muscles are unable to stretch out to their normal length because the shortened fascia prevents that. Because of this, you now have chronic tension that is difficult to change. The tension has become “institutionalized” so to speak. This is what creates the famous “Trigger Points” you might have heard about. Trigger points occur in muscles that are chronically tense for a long time. Trigger points are painful nodules in the body of the muscle that hurt all the time but especially when somebody presses on them. If you have trigger points in your muscles, it is a sign of advanced muscle tension and fascial shortening. And these tight muscles trigger headaches!
To eliminate your tense muscles from the triggers that initiate headaches, your muscles must be able to stretch and reclaim their normal length in order to relax again. Your muscles have to become normal again, getting rid of the accumulated tension, shortened fascia and any trigger points you may have developed.
All this accumulated tightness in the muscles of the head, jaw and shoulders increases your headache frequency and severity. From 30 years of experience working with chronic headache suffers I know that muscle tension plays a huge role in triggering both migraine headaches and muscle tension headaches. This same muscle tension which creates changes in the actual structure of your muscles has a fancy name…it is called the Myofascial Pain Syndrome.
For your muscles to have this syndrome, you have developed faulty habit patterns that are keeping your muscles tense and you have the shortening of muscle fibers and the fascia keeping your muscles short and contracted.
There is really NO WAY medication can change these phenomenon that occur in the muscles.
The remedy?
Only therapeutic stretching (or deep tissue massage) of the muscles helping the muscles regain their normal non-tense length and then changing the habit patterns which have keep abnormal tension in place will eliminate this powerful headache trigger.
I realize that I may have burst more than a few bubbles with that statement but you really need to know what you are up against. It bears repeating that all the medication in the world cannot affect this muscle tension and muscle-shortening phenomenon.
Ready for number 2?
Missing Piece #2
Stress is the “Smoking Gun”!
Unresolved stress dominates how your nervous system reacts, keeping your body in a vicious cycle of headaches, let down, buildup of stress and headaches. If you have chronic muscle tension in any of the muscles of your head, neck or shoulders stress will increase the likelihood of a headache. Because you have patterns of chronic muscle tension in place, you are more vulnerable to the effects of stress than you would be if you didn’t have chronic muscle tension.
Here is how this works. Your body naturally reacts to negative or upsetting events by contracting various body systems like muscles and blood vessels. This is part of the famous “Fight or Flight” response — your body prepares to take you into action. This is not a problem when it happens infrequently, but if your body stays stressed for very long and your muscles contracted for very long then these contractions develop into an unconscious habits which then create abnormal levels of tension and an inability to relax that gets worse over time.
It is important to know that these habits can persist even though the stressful event that triggered them is long gone (held in place by the shortened muscle fibers and fascia).
The Relaxation Response is the opposite of the Stress Response and is essential in counteracting the stress in your life and getting rid of headaches.
Each response is an aspect of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)…that marvelous area of your nervous system that regulates everything in the body, keeping all the organs of the body functioning normally.
It is probably not a surprise that if your body is constantly gearing up for action that tension builds up inside of your body. After a while this tension becomes unconscious habits making it difficult to relax.
One useful way to describe this is to say that your nervous system is either operating in the safe zone, the normal zone or the red zone. Headache sufferers often have nervous systems that operate primarily in the Red Zone, triggering headache after headache and building up more and more tension over time. Here is an explanation of these three zones.
Level 1 – Safe Zone
This is where you are relaxed and all body and mind systems are at rest. When you are trained to reach this state you are alert but thoroughly relaxed. This is also the state where you body can recover from stress. You don’t have to be a monk or a nun to cultivate this kind of relaxation; it is accessible to everyone with practice.
Level 2 – Normal Zone
This is the state where you can participate in normal activities without triggering a headache. Obviously, there is a natural up and down of ANS activity during the day depending upon circumstances. But with body awareness, you can easily recover from daily stress by knowing how to relax after you notice you are feeling stressed. With training, your body is able to quickly move from stressed to relaxed avoiding the negative affects of ongoing unresolved stress.
Level 3 – Red Zone
This is the state where you are stressed most of the time and your coping abilities have been compromised. This is where circumstances and your reactions to them collide raising your stress levels beyond what your body can safely tolerate. This is where headaches occur most often and the worst part? You may not feel pushed, exhausted, too busy or irritable. But your frequent headaches confirm that you are. It is really best if you learn how to only make rare visits to the Red Zone and not live there.
If you have migraine headaches you may have experienced what is called “let down headaches” or “weekend” or “vacation” headaches. This would seem to contradict that being able to relax is beneficial to headache reduction, but that is not a valid conclusion. What actually is happening is that abrupt changes can trigger headaches. So going from high stress levels during the week to a relaxing weekend can actually trigger a headache!
It is important point to realize that having the habit of living life in the Red Zone didn’t happen over night. And, it will take time to reverse that habit. So, if your nervous system is operating in what we call the red zone you are already stressed out when you start your day and already vulnerable to a headache.
Perhaps you’re nodding your head right now because you can see yourself in this exact same place. If you are lucky, you have only had chronic headaches for a few years and your health and relationships have not had time to be adversely affected.
Basically, what’s going on is while most doctors can tell you what stress does to your body, they offer little help about how you can insulate yourself from the negative physiological affects of stress. And, stress doesn’t stop with your physical body.
Stress can also wreak havoc with your emotions as well resulting in anxiety, depression, fatigue, anger and or aggravate many other health problems like Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Insomnia. In fact, many chronic headache sufferers also have at least one of these other stress related health problems.
And speaking of problems, that brings me to my third and “Missing Piece”…
Missing Piece #3
Medication doesn’t affect muscular triggers
AND
it can even make your headaches much, much worse.
No medication has ever been made that will stretch out tight muscles and loosen up tight fascia. Some medicine may help relax your muscles temporarily but because of side effects you probably don’t want to take these medicines long term.
The first problem is that most medications which do work on your headaches stop working after a while. Then you are stuck looking for new medications to do what the last one should have done. All the while there is the missing piece of chronic muscle tension that is not being addressed and which continues to trigger headaches.
The second problem, and this is actually a really bad one, is that overuse of OTC (over the counter) drugs and even prescription medication actually can cause more headaches. These are called Rebound Headaches. So the medications that are designed to quickly relieve migraines end up causing them with repeated use over a long time.
Getting off these medicines is very difficult and a major chore and then what do you replace them with? Other meds that do the same: work for a while, stop working and cause rebound headaches.
There is a way to deal with all this that doesn’t leave you worse off than when you started. That’s what this report is about.
Who Am I and Why Should You Even Listen To Me?
Since you almost certainly have no clue who I am, I thought it would be appropriate to introduce myself before we get too deep into the report.
My name is Thomas Cobb, and I am a biofeedback therapist and long-time T’ai Chi teacher with extensive training and real life experience in physiology and headache treatment. The fact that you haven’t heard of me is no surprise. I have never been comfortable in the spotlight and have purposely remained “underground” for the better part of my career.
I had the good fortune to be trained in biofeedback while I was a young T’ai Chi student and was able to blend both the scientific techniques of biofeedback with the physical control techniques of T’ai Chi.
Most people I talk to have never heard of biofeedback. Yet it is one of the most valuable, non-invasive ways to change your physiology. Simply put, biofeedback for headaches consists of placing small electrodes over muscles in the head, face, neck and shoulders. The signals your muscles send are shown on a computer screen. This allows you to actually see the levels of muscle tension which gives you the ability to then learn how to lower it.
You may have heard of T’ai Chi or seen it done as a series of slow movements you learn in a specific sequence. There are many recent studies that have shown T’ai Chi to be beneficial to good health, particularly musculoskeletal health. Even if you have heard of it, it is probably somewhat mysterious to you.
One of the valuable things T’ai Chi does incredibly well is that it teaches a person how to become very aware of your body’s functioning both inside and out. In fact an advanced T’ai Chi practitioner is very sensitive to how the body is affected by outside agents, and learns how to use the patterned movements to correct body mechanics and read subtle body signals that are essential for good health.
While being professionally trained as a biofeedback therapist, I was also being personally trained in the core principles of Tai Chi. In fact for 6 years I was my teacher’s only student! And, a wonderful thing happened. There was a convergence in my learning that led me to create a powerful, effective training program for relieving and preventing headaches.
I was able to transmit the techniques I mastered in T’ai chi and biofeedback giving headache sufferers the kind of control needed to manage stress, and eliminate muscle tension and reduce or eliminate headaches. And it works really well.
That’s why you’re reading this report!
It’s my mission to remedy the misunderstandings of how headaches become chronic and to show you how you can benefit from changing the triggers described in this report.
Most doctors are only vaguely aware of these techniques but unless they know somebody personally that they have worked with for many years you will not ever get a referral for biofeedback. And, it would be a rare practitioner who had the same training I had in biofeedback and T’ai Chi.
The factors describe in this report are extremely important in keeping chronic headaches in place.
How often do you operate in the red zone?
Are you aware of muscle tension in your face, neck or shoulders?
My sincerest hope is that if you know about these triggers you will begin to identify them and reverse them.
Please do me a favor, leave a comment below and let me know if you know you have muscle tension in the muscles of your face, head or neck. Also let me know how often you feel you operate in the red zone.
I will be sending you more information on these and other triggers in the near future. Until then, let me know what you think and what you have to deal with in your life because of headaches.