Your headaches used to be infrequent and mild enough that over-the-counter (OTC) medications were more than able to handle the issue and bring you relief.
These days, those same medications aren’t as effective, and your head pain is having a much bigger, and far more negative, impact on your life. So you’re in search of more effective solutions.
Well, you’ve come to the right place. At World Medical Group dba Neuropathy & Pain Centers of Texas, our pain management team includes experts in headaches. And here’s what we want you to know about successfully treating headaches.
It’s rare to come across someone who hasn’t experienced at least one headache. In fact, most of us routinely navigate headaches throughout our lives, from secondary congestion headaches to primary tension-type headaches.
To give you a better idea, there are about 150 different types of headaches, and a few of them are far more common, including:
For the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to focus on tension and migraine headaches, since they’re the primary and chronic headaches that affect the most people.
Maybe you’ve successfully managed your head pain with OTC medications, but these same drugs aren’t doing the trick anymore. This might be because your headaches are getting worse or more frequent, or they’re just not responding as they used to. Whatever the case, rest assured that you have options.
As we mentioned, we have a good deal of experience helping patients to overcome debilitating headaches, and, in most cases, we recommend a comprehensive strategy that may include:
One of the first stops we might make is to get more aggressive with your medical pain relief. There are dozens of different pharmacological approaches for headaches, including medicines that are preventive, that stop pain, that reduce the frequency of headaches, or that reduce inflammation.
For example, if you’d like to prevent frequent headaches, we might try anticonvulsant medications, antidepressants, or blood pressure medicines, to name just a few.
We also have a complete arsenal for on-the-spot medications that can relieve headache pain in the moment, as well as side effects, such as nausea.
We work with you until we find the right medications for your headache needs.
If you suffer from chronic migraine, we can try Botox injections, which reduce headaches’ frequency and severity.
For both migraines and tension headaches, trigger point therapy can play an invaluable role. This therapy targets knots in your fascia that can contribute to your headache pain. Our goal is to release the grip that these trigger points have on your muscles and tissues. This can prevent and manage headaches.
Migraines are often triggered by certain factors, and food is a big one. If you suffer from migraines, we can work on identifying food triggers, such as chocolate or red wine, and find ways to work around them.
Enough can’t be said about the role that stress can play in chronic and primary headaches. With that in mind, we work with patients on good stress-relief strategies that can help with muscle tension and headaches.
In most cases, we combine these therapies for maximum results that will keep headaches from disrupting your life.
To figure out which headache treatment will work best for you, we invite you to call or message one of our offices in Arlington or Fort Worth, Texas, today to schedule a consultation.
