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Dr. Clayton Roach: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Double Doc Talk with me, Dr. Clayton Roach.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: And I’m Dr. Ben Boudreau. Today, we’ll be covering the most common types of headaches that we see in our chiropractic office.

Dr. Clayton Roach: Yeah, so we wanted to focus on the ones that we actually see here in this practice because obviously, you can have headaches from a brain tumor or a stroke, but we wanted to focus on the ones that we actually have results with that we actually see here. The first one, one of the actually the most common type of headache is one that affects a lot of people. And sometimes I’ll public speak and I’ll ask how many of you are stressed and the ones that don’t raise their hands, I know our line because we all have stress, which leads us to the most common headache type, which is a tension headache.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: Yeah. So a tension-type headache oftentimes will feel like a tight band in and around the head. And this is really, really, really common. And it affects two out of three adults in the US. Okay. And there are two different types of tension-type headaches. You can have episodic tension-type headaches, which usually impact you less than 15 days out of the month. And then there are chronic tension-type headaches, albeit a bit less common. And these affect you more than 15 days out of the month. So you have more days where you’re impacted by a headache than you are headache free. And this affects roughly 3% of the population.

Dr. Clayton Roach: Yeah. Now it’s probably worth noting that, you know, although they might not be seasonal, they might come and go as your stress comes and goes, right? If there’s a stressful period at work, stressful period as a family, you know, death in the family, those tension headaches can somewhat match on a graph the events in your life. Right? The second most common type of headache, the most painful, we call them cluster headaches.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: Yeah. So a cluster-type headache oftentimes will appear at night and they usually affect the eye. And so you’ll feel pain behind the eye. Most times it’s one-sided. Again, this is the most common type of headache or most painful type of headache, rather, and it impacts males predominantly more than it impacts females. Yeah.

Dr. Clayton Roach: And the keyword there is a cluster. So you get like the stabbing pain in the eye and you think you’re done, but you’re not. Like some of these cluster headaches can last from one hour to 3 hours. And when they’re coming in, like in a cluster, you can have them for weeks to months. So a lot of people and I’ve had patients say that it’s pretty debilitating pain when they do come. And again, right around the eye, cluster headache.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: Cluster headaches. So the most painful type of headache that you can have.

Dr. Clayton Roach: So we’re talking today about the most common types of headaches. Number three is going to be a cervicogenic headache, the most popular in terms of what we see here. And I’m going to do this here and I’ll lead just to our conversation.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: Absolutely. And so a cervicogenic headache is pain causing a headache that originates from the structures of the neck. So the muscles and the joints, and are really common in the population because they impact those that have poor posture may be sitting at a desk for too long. Oftentimes it’s on the same side as a neck, shoulder, or arm injury.

Dr. Clayton Roach: Yeah, and a great segue to talking about chiropractic care, because most of the time when we’re assessing the neck, you know, people may be coming in with neck problems and we’re assessing the neck. It might be a big mess in there and things aren’t moving well and muscles are tight. And in history there is a previous shoulder problem. We just ask you know, how about headaches? Are you having headaches? They think we’re mind readers, but it just kind of goes with the whole scenario.

Typically, you know, you’ll have pain on that side and you’ll feel like the back of the skull. And what happens when you’re standing if your head goes forward, you know, you’d want to look down, but you don’t. So you lift your head up and everything jams in the back, creating that sensitivity around the bottom part of the skull. So cervicogenic definitely common. And you see that a lot with people that actually work at a desk that is doing sitting because their posture is constantly being strained. Yeah.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: And usually we see it among the female population, although males are impacted in the same way. However, we do see it among the female population according to the research.

Dr. Clayton Roach: Yeah. So there you have it, the most common types of headache. Number one, we talked about the most popular tension headache. The second one.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: Is a cluster headache, the most painful headache. And number three.

Dr. Clayton Roach: The one that you see a lot because of posture and stuff that we see every day. Cervicogenic, headaches. Well, we’re seeing a lot more. And, you know, not to go too off on a tangent is young kids having cervicogenic headaches because of the amount of time we’re spending on devices sitting in school is just the perfect environment for these cervical genic headaches to prosper because it’s coming from a neck problem and structural problem. So. There you have it. Another episode of Double Doc Talk, follow us. How do people get a hold of us?

Dr. Ben Boudreau: So people can find us on YouTube, right? So you can subscribe to our YouTube channel or you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to get more great content and more Double Doc Talks in the future. So I’m Dr. Ben Boudreau.

Dr. Clayton Roach: And I’m Dr. Clayton Roach. See you on our next episode.