Because headaches can be caused by different malfunctions, it is critical that treatment effectively addresses the cause of the headaches.
When headache patients are treated through a traditional ‘symptom-based protocol”, in which headaches are the symptom, ten people suffering from headaches are likely to be given the same or similar medications to control the symptom.
However, if the protocols are based on the cause of the headaches, one person might be successfully treated by a chiropractor, because their headaches resulted from a misaligned vertebra in the neck. Another person’s headaches may be caused by food sensitivities, and the doctor or nutritionist, who identifies and corrects the problem, will have a successful outcome with that patient. A third person’s headaches may be due to an imbalance in their cranial bones and TMJ muscles, things commonly corrected by Applied Kinesiologists, and would likely have success from this form of diagnosis and treatment. A fourth person’s headaches may be due to an imbalance in their acupuncture energy and be successfully treated by an acupuncturist or doctor who treats acupuncture points. These possibilities for headaches are all discussed in my book, Your Inner Pharmacy.
The greatest outcomes result from successfully matching the treatment to the patient. Naturally, this process requires: 1) identifying the specific malfunction that is causing the headaches and then 2) applying a specific treatment or lifestyle modification to correct the malfunction.
One of the challenges is that in the examples listed here, the patients would not necessarily know which practitioner to see, the chiropractor, nutritionist, acupuncturist, or applied kinesiologist. This is precisely why both traditional and alternative medicine need more generalists, to identify the cause and then treat the cause or perhaps then use specialists to treat the specific cause.
In holistic health care, the leading generalists are Applied Kinesiologists, who evaluate a patient by looking at “the person with the headaches”, not just the headaches. Applied Kinesiologists also do a wide variety of treatment procedures that encompass all the examples listed above, chiropractic adjustments, diet and lifestyle evaluation, cranial and TMJ treatment, and balancing the acupuncture system. Because headaches are commonly caused by more than one malfunction, testing and treating different systems can increase the success rate.