When that throbbing, pulsating, and incredibly uncomfortable headache pain comes around, it can be so frustrating and impact your ability to function and carry out daily tasks.
Two common headache types are tension headaches and migraine headaches, and they can both be triggered by trigger points. Trigger points are painful muscle knots that can form in any muscle group and cause pain at the trigger point location (localized pain). However, they can also send pain signals to other places throughout your body (referred pain).
While there are plenty of helpful management strategies available for tension and migraine headaches, if trigger points are part of the reason for your headaches, treating the tight muscles could offer a more effective solution for headache pain.
At ReGen Pain Management in Plano and Frisco, Texas, pain management specialist Dr. Jon Koning leads our team in offering trigger point injections for headache treatment plans to release tight muscles. In this month’s blog, we discuss the relationship between trigger points and headaches and how trigger point injections can help.
Your muscles are held in place by thin bands of tissue called fascia. When your muscle bands and the accompanying tissues stay in a taut and contracted position, they feel like tiny marbles under your skin that are tender to the touch. These are trigger points, which are often called muscle knots.
Trigger points can develop anytime you injure a muscle or repeatedly put too much strain on it. Common trigger point causes include continually tensing your muscles, sleeping in awkward positions, or repeatedly putting your body in unnatural positions.
It’s common for trigger points to develop in your upper back, neck, and shoulders. These are called myofascial trigger points and are ones that often lead to headaches.
As stated above, trigger points can cause pain at the site of the knot, but they can also cause pain to spread to other areas of your body. If you develop a myofascial trigger point in your back, neck, or shoulders, that pain can spread to your head, causing headaches.
If you deal with chronic trigger points, it can make you more susceptible and sensitive to pain, which, in turn, can increase your risk for chronic headache pain.
When it comes to repeated headache episodes, whether migraine or tension-related, it’s often helpful to find what specifically is causing them. Identifying one specific headache trigger may not always be possible, but it’s often more effective than simply trying to relieve pain.
To identify your headache triggers, try keeping a headache journal to log what you eat, what you drink, how you’re feeling, your environment, and your physical activity. All of these things can play into your headache development risk since stress, diet, caffeine, exercise, hormones, and weather are just some of the things that can trigger migraine or tension headaches.
If you’re still dealing with persistent headaches more often than not and you’re not satisfied with your current course of treatment, trigger point injections could be just what you need.
Dr. Koning can identify the trigger points that may be causing or contributing to your headaches. He then injects an anesthetic into the trigger point to render it inactive and alleviate pain at the trigger point site and anywhere else it’s traveled.
To learn more about trigger point injections or any of our other effective treatments for headache pain, schedule a consultation with our ReGen Pain Management team by calling your nearest office location or using our online booking feature today.
