Acupuncture for Headaches: A Chinese Medicine Point of View

Headaches are one of the most common causes of people seeking out alternative and conventional care and I thought it would be very interesting to talk about headaches from a Chinese medicine point of view because there are so many different kinds of headaches that present and often when I tell my patients about this kind of headache usually has this ideology or these are the factors that predispose one to these headaches they're often surprised. So I thought I would share some of these common headache types as well as in a Chinese medicine point of view and in my clinical experience where they're often coming from. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book Master of the Day on Amazon, doctor of Chinese medicine. Now before we jump into this video I have two very important links right below this video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in my private practice or virtually via telemedicine, the link is below to my private practice and clinic and there's also a free guide there below which will also put you on my weekly video newsletter about Chinese medicine and how it can help you. So let's talk about the four most common kinds of headaches I see clinically. The first is what we could call digestive headaches. The second is what we could call tension headaches or what I think of as yang deficiency headaches. The third being migraines and the fourth are what we can call maybe quote-unquote adrenal headaches. So let's jump into these a bit more. The first category digestive headaches are often no surprise associated with people who have digestive problems. The location is almost always the front of the head and often people report things like they feel odd sensations or they ate something they weren't supposed to the night before and they just feel weird the next day. Like odd sensations in their head like ants or water crawling or tingly or fogginess, cotton head, brain fog is another term people use but it's usually generalized, low grade, not sharp and it's usually very chronic. So these kinds of digestive headaches it's important to know that they are digestive related because these patients for example these people will feel better when we use formulas targeted to heal digestion. They're often prone to a more what we call damp constitution so the gastric mucosa are usually just this person's often but not always often prone to having a lot of mucus in their throat sometimes reflux sometimes just they're always clearing their throat that's just one presentation but that location and the general quality of what people call brain fog is very common in that scenario and that's important to know because dietary changes or Chinese formulas which is my favorite most effective way I've seen will often produce improvement or resolution of those symptoms. Headache category number two is what we call a yang deficiency headache. I guess this most likely fits into the biomedical category of tension headache. So generally it's bilateral both sides often is a band that goes around the person's head feels like they're wearing a hat sometimes they often reference it's here in the temples and the most important thing for this that I see clinically is it's usually associated with poor or under sleep or more acute stress. So yang deficiency meaning like if I sleep eight hours a night and then I suddenly go to sleep six hours a week what symptoms do you begin to experience? You've put yourself into a state of yang deficiency let's just call it general exhaustion right you're sleep deprived you're run down so let's say yang deficiency equals run down run down headaches where do you manifest them typically maybe you don't even get headaches maybe it's digestive symptoms maybe it's something else so what I typically see with these is that they're often associated with insomnia and poor sleep sometimes with anxiety as well and often when the person is sleeping better then those headaches can improve. The third type these constitutional migraine headaches they're often debilitating pain where people are really need really strong pharmaceuticals and even combinations of pharmaceuticals because they don't experience any pain relief otherwise. The location is different where people often say it starts you know it goes in the eye around the eye suboccipital in the back of the going to the eye this area is frequently referenced sometimes with the jaw and the more in the face for these and for these the treatment approach is a little bit different there are two different patterns that we tend to see one is a more excess type where the person experiences often more heat and usually more constipation more hard stools they have more of that kind of pattern the other side of these more chronic headaches is the more what we consider deficient and cold the person is their body temperature is often cold they often if they're female they often have issues with their menses they often will see the symptoms exacerbated by their menses where the severe migraines are much worse often leading up to or during their menses and that's often a key diagnostic clue for what's going on here. So those two types there's usually those two different presentations one of what we call the excess type experiences more heat in their body deficient type these are usually very cold patients and a lot of them that I see are very thin it's on the cold thin kind of stereotypically anemic side. Now the last type I'm going to generalize and just say adrenal headaches in our everyday life people say adrenal fatigue but it's really a misnomer and it's not a proper term there's no real adrenal fatigue but what I find is that people who are undergoing chronic long-term stress that are not prone to manifesting true migraines will manifest these kind of suboccipital headaches and more often what manifests is they have chronic neck tension. So in Chinese medicine you have you know your bladder channel comes up along the back with the kidneys there wraps around the back of the neck and then it comes over the head right this this way in that way and people will often manifest with suboccipital tension and it's just always there no matter how many times they see a chiropractor no amount of times they get a massage no matter how many times they get acupuncture there if the real cause isn't addressed these will be very chronic. I myself had them for four years because I was working over 70 hours a week and every night I would foam roll my neck and my back and like always massaging my traps really hard they never went away and then sure enough six months after stopping that work regime and having my hours they went away. I was sitting the same number of hours per day I stopped all massage altogether they went away. I find this to be very common and these are also very commonly associated with anxiety with tachycardia and often with insomnia too. So one of the patterns we've talked about here in these videos is this pattern of the heart yang being weak which predisposes someone to palpitations anxiety insomnia all kinds of stuff but often a secondary ramification is that people will manifest with neck tension and upper back tension and even suboccipital headaches and sometimes jaw stuff as well. So that is just me pointing out some correlations that I think were super interesting when I first learned about this in Chinese medicine because it was very true it was obviously true to me based on what I'd seen these patterns in other people and so it's useful to know right is my frontal headache really about dehydration or lack of sleep or if I go on some detox diet for a week does it go away so I think these were very useful to know for me as a patient so I'm passing them on here for you as well. That's all I have for you today guys again check out the links below this video if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or online via telemedicine you can reach my clinic and private practice below and again there's a free download for you there for daily rituals that can help you add yours to your life potentially with Chinese medicine. All right before you go two other videos for you right here.