3 Reasons to Consider Trigger Point Injections for Your Tension Headaches

Perhaps you experience tension-type headaches that come and go with stress, or maybe you’re experiencing daily headaches that have become an unwelcome backdrop to your life.

Tension-type headaches are, far and away, the most common type of headache — up to 78% of the general population has experienced at least one of these headaches, and 3% experience chronic tension headaches.

If you’re finding that solutions for your head pain are falling short of your quality-of-life goals, the team here at World Medical Group dba Neuropathy & Pain Centers of Texas wants to outline a few benefits of trigger point therapy in reducing trigger-type headaches.

1. Trigger point injections tackle the source of tension-type headaches 

Trigger points are commonly known as muscle knots, and they’re found in your myofascial tissues, which are your muscles and the surrounding connective tissues. The myofascial tissues throughout your body are often connected, which means that a myofascial trigger point can lead to localized pain, as well as pain in other areas as the trigger point pulls on the network of connective tissues.

In other words, a muscle knot in your neck, shoulders, or base of your head can lead to tension-type headaches. And, trigger points can often exacerbate migraine pain by creating more tension around your head.

With trigger point therapy, we tackle these muscle knots directly to relieve the tension. To do this, we insert a needle with lidocaine (and sometimes a steroid to reduce swelling) directly into the trigger point. This causes the tension to release, which can relieve your tension-type headaches.

Sometimes, we don’t even need to put medication into the syringe. With a technique called dry needling, inserting the needle into the muscle knot is often enough to get it to release its grip.

2. Trigger point therapy reduces your reliance on medications

Taking medications to relieve head pain is an effective short-term solution, but it’s not a great long-term one, as medications can do damage over time.

With trigger point therapy, we can quickly release the tension and, in doing so, reduce your need for medications.

3. Trigger point therapy can offer great results

If your headache pain is a result of (or complicated by) a hypersensitive trigger point, then there’s every reason to believe that trigger point therapy can work well for you. In one study, researchers concluded that, “Trigger point therapy has reduced the duration, intensity, and frequency of headaches.”

The therapy takes us only a few minutes to administer, and you should experience immediate results if a trigger point is involved in your ongoing head pain. And, these results can last for some time — reports show that some patients can experience a meaningful reduction in pain that lasts for weeks.

If you’d like to explore whether trigger point therapy is right for your tension-type headaches, we invite you to call or message one of our offices in Arlington or Fort Worth, Texas, today to schedule an appointment.