October 7, 2005

The Best Wealth is Your Health

Chiropractic care helps reduce tension headaches

By Dr. Beatrice Tapia
Special to the Times

Evidence reports recently released by the Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research show the effectiveness of chiropractic care for sufferers of tension headaches.

The reports were the continuation of a release of a study done at Duke University several years earlier. In the study many different types of physical and behavioral treatments were used for patients with headaches. Chiropractic care was specifically compared to amitriptyline, a common medication used for headaches.

In this study the staff at the Duke Center screened articles from the literature, created evidence tables, and analyzed the quality and magnitude of results from these studies. They then drafted an evidence report with peer review from a panel of 25 reviewers, including researchers and clinicians in chiropractic.

The results showed that chiropractic was highly effective for patients with tension headaches. When compared with the drug amitriptyline, chiropractic and the drug had similar short term effects during the episode. However, the drug carried with it an adverse reaction rate in 82 percent of the patients.

The most profound effects were seen after the care was discontinued in the study. In these instances the patients who were on drug therapy essentially returned to the same state as before.

However, the patients who were under chiropractic care continued to show sustained reduction in headache frequency and severity even after the chiropractic care was discontinued.

The implications are that chiropractic is not actually a therapy or treatment, but rather gets to the cause—allowing the body to effect a correction that lasts beyond actual care.

Individuals with chronic headaches are considerably likely to overuse pain medications, according to a May 11, 2004 issue of the journal “Neurology” (62:1540-4). And, analgesic use is more strongly linked with migraines than with other types of chronic headache, neck pain or backache.

Investigators pooled data on 49,064 people in Norway.

Subjects who reported overusing analgesics were 7.5 times more likely to suffer from chronic headache, meaning they had headaches on 15 or more days a month, compared with people who did not overuse pain medication.

Chronic migraine had the strongest association with analgesic overuse, with those suffering from them at a 10.3-fold increased risk of overusing the medications.

The association became stronger with increasing duration of analgesic use for all groups, including people with headaches, neck and back pain, wrote the study’s authors.

If you would like more information, there will be a lecture on Eliminating Headaches at Dr. Tapia’s office on Friday October 28, from 6 p.m. to 6:30pm. This is a community service and there is no charge for the event. Please call her Evergreen office at (408) 532-1130.