The title “Living With Headaches” presupposes that people with headaches should learn to live with their headaches. In fact that is precisely what many doctors and health professionals (and drug companies) expect you to do. While there are many reasons for having headaches, the notion that you just have to accept them or that they are “normal” is antiquated, old fashion and yesterday’s news.

However, along with proper treatment there are things that you can do if you suffer from headaches that will lighten your load and leave you empowered.

• Lower stress:  Modern research and headache practice has shifted away from the 1980s/1990s notions of stress and “psychosocial” problems as being the primary reasons for headaches, to more of a posture and neuromuscular based approach. However, unregulated stress can still affect both muscle physiology as well as the central nervous system. Uncontrolled and unregulated stress can be a contributing factor to not only one’s general health but also toward the presence of headaches.
• Learn more about your condition: Educating yourself about headaches, neuromuscular dentistry, TMD treatment and headache physiology, will help you to better understand both the problem and the solution. For people who have long suffered, education lends itself to hope and to possibility, as well as to knowing the “whys and hows” of treatment. However, the education must be accomplished with studying the right information. Sadly, much or most of what is readily available from the medical and pharmaceutical side does not take into consideration or frankly understand the contributing physiology of the dental bite, the jaw joints, jaw and neck muscles, and most importantly – the health and status of the Trigeminal nerve.
• Become savvy about your headaches: Become more aware of your headaches, headache patterns and triggers, etc. Knowing some of these particulars will be of great assistance in helping those helping you better figure out how to resolve your headache dilemma. Before you go see the dentist about your headaches, think through your history with headaches. Numerous questions must eventually be answered about when they started, what makes them worse/better, injuries and surgery, previous treatment attempts, and many other details. Keep a diary or make a summary to share with the dentist.
• Have regular medical checkups: Headaches are sometimes caused by “organic” reasons such as tumors, strokes, and other diseases. Sometimes it is as reassuring to know what it is not as to know what it is! With sudden headache onsets, or with headaches accompanied by any altered neurologic disturbances, or following any sort of head trauma, you should immediately have these situations and complaints investigated to at least rule out more serious life-threatening problems.
• Don’t allow headaches to control your life: Some people find themselves in a vicious cycle of pain that they can’t seem to get freed of. Headaches run their lives and their lives are often scheduled around their headaches. Headaches can and not infrequently ruins employment, school, social life, and family life. Drug dependencies can become established in a well intentioned attempt to survive. Treatment for headaches is available.
• Do work on yourself: Often people with headaches suffer from poor workplace ergonomics and have poor posture. Strengthening core muscles, fixing or properly compensating for altered or poor posture, getting massages and chiropractic treatments and physical therapy, are often essential components in solving the headache puzzle. If there are dental-skeletal or neuromuscular problems with the balance of the jaws and bite, the “physical modalities” should be accomplished while under the direction and care of a TMD or “neuromuscular dentist”.
• Don’t arbitrarily stop taking prescribed medication: It is generally not a good idea to stop taking prescription medication unless supervised by a health professional knowledgeable of the medication and how it is being used. This is particularly true in these situations if long-term antidepressant medications are being used. During TMD and headache treatment, as the need for the medications lessen, collaboration can be achieved with prescribing physicians to determine the need or purposes for medications. The objective of all treatments related to TMD and headaches is to be able to manage them through postural correction of the jaws and better integrative stability of the spine and head and jaws.
• Have your dental bite and muscle comfort evaluated: Many if not most headaches have as one of their primary components an unhealthy involvement of tense hyper-active muscles. Because jaw muscles are coupled with neck muscles to help stabilize head posture, the neck and shoulders are often the collateral damage when the jaws don’t work well together. Unless or until the teeth and jaws fit together properly and within a range of physiologic health, there is often little hope of headache relief beyond the continued use of drugs and ongoing palliative support for the never-ending symptoms. Frankly said, if the dental bite is not balanced, if the jaw joints are not protected from abusive forces, then there is diminished probability that sought for relief will be achieved.