 Hi, my name is Dr. Sarah Visconti and I'm a doctor of chiropractic at SCU. Hi, my name is Dr. Jamie Colgers. I'm a doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine here at SCU. Today we're going to talk about headaches and how to alleviate them through chiropractic care. Today we're talking about how to alleviate headaches through acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. So generally speaking there are three different types of headaches that bring patients into a chiropractic office. They're either migraines, cervical genetic headaches, or tension headaches. One of the ways you can treat your headaches at home is through acupressure points. So there's a few that are really easy to access that you can do yourself. One of them is between your thumb and your index finger in that web. You're going to push in and find a tender point. You're just going to push in to that point and massage for about 30 seconds to a minute or as much as you can tolerate. Sometimes it can be pretty sore. Depending on where you're feeling the headache, if you're feeling it more in the front you can place your thumbs on the inside of your eyebrow and press into that. That's an easy one if you are feeling more sinus pressure or some tension in the front part of your head. If your headache is more on the sides in the temporal region you can press on the temples here. This is a good pressure point. Sometimes it can make your head feel a little bit more sore temporarily as you're pressing into that trigger point but then when you release it should feel better. The last one if you're feeling the pain more in your back, sometimes neck pain can cause headaches that come up along the head from the back into the front. So again you can find a pressure point right at the base of the head. In terms of home care treatment for cervical genetic headaches what I like to have patients do is get one or two lacrosse balls or tennis balls and put them into a sock. You're going to place that on the floor and then the patient will lay on those tennis balls and placing it right at their base of their skull. They can lay there for 30 seconds to a minute, tuck their chin and just add a light amount of pressure into those muscles to give them to relax a little bit more. Even though we're not exactly sure what is causing tension type headaches it's never a bad idea to have patients go home with some sort of stretch or exercise to help alleviate neck tension. A really easy one is just something called a chin retraction. So you want the back of your head to go straight up while your chin goes straight back. You want to make sure that you're not tucking down to your chest but taking your chin and driving it straight back. So getting a really nice double chin picture perfect while you do this. In terms of home care for migraines most important thing is going to be identifying the triggers. Every person has different triggers for their migraines and what brings on an episode. So if we can identify what each individual's trigger is we can help them as best they can avoid those triggers as much as possible. It's important to understand that there's many different ways to treat chronic headaches or even short-term headaches. Some people can't do all types of therapy. Some people can't get chiropractic adjustment. Some people can't take Chinese herbs. Some people are really afraid of needles and maybe that's not the right way for you to get treatment. So there's multiple different ways that you can get treatment so we're here today to tell you all of the different ways that we offer here in SCU. Up to 76% of the population experiences at least one headache per month. It's really important that we know how to diagnose, when to treat and also when not to treat and therefore refer to our patient's pain.