Chronically Tight Neck Muscles Trigger Your Headaches!
Your persistent tight neck muscles have triggered your headaches for years. You massaged them, heated them, stretched them, and twisted your neck in every way imaginable to get them to let go. Yet everything you have done is a temporary fix. Your neck muscles rebound, re-tighten and are just waiting to ambush you with yet another headache.
Get to the Root Cause of Your Muscle Tightness!
Your tight neck muscles might be nothing more than the final link in a muscle chain that has gone haywire long ago. The culprit muscle chain starts in your leg and works its way up to the neck. If your leg muscles are not working properly, the trouble can be sent upstream in a ripple effect to tighten your neck muscles.
Multiple healthcare practitioners have worked on your neck for years. However, they have never checked for the root cause of your problem further downstream. It was easier to have you come in for your monthly treatments rather than doing a deeper dive to determine why you have tight neck muscles in the first place.
How Can My Leg Muscles Cause My Neck Muscles to Get Tight?
Your muscles fire in a certain pattern with any action you do. When you walk, first your left heel strikes the ground. Secondly, muscles in the leg engage as shock absorber. Finally, a muscular wave of contractions proceeds up from your leg, goes across to the opposite side of the trunk, and ends at your neck and shoulder blade. Your left hip muscles are weak and as a result the normal muscular wave sequence is disrupted.
The entire headache problem may boil down to this disruption. Your right neck and shoulder blade muscles will involuntarily tighten because they need to compensate and “help out” the weak left hip muscles. Your neck and shoulder blade muscles tighten prematurely every time you take a step. You spend much time, effort and money spend trying to get your neck muscles to loosen. However, once you start walking again on weak left hip muscles, your right neck and shoulder blade tightens again.
Why Do Weak Left Hip Muscles Tighten Right Neck Muscles?
Your left leg and your right arm move forward at the same time when you walk, and vice versa. If you have overactive, tight right and left shoulder blade muscles. As a result, you may test weak in your left hip muscles. You may not have activated your hip muscles and just have apparent weakness. Your hip muscles may just have “forgotten” to turn on and as a result become the weak link in your muscular chain. They fire out of their normal order.
Re-train your weak hip muscles to activate and do their normal job. Your tightened right neck and shoulder blade muscles can then relax again. The newly relaxed neck and shoulder blade muscles no longer will trigger your headaches.
Does Muscle Misfiring Happen in Real Life?
Yes, people suffer the effects of muscle misfiring! For example, one 28-year-old woman I treated suffered headaches for 11 years. She was taking so much headache medication she was afraid to get pregnant. Her left hip tested weak. Every time she contracted her weak left hip muscles, her right neck and shoulder blade muscles would fire. These muscles never returned to a normal relaxed state but remained in a state if constant tension.
Her neck and shoulder muscles relaxed with retraining, and her headaches subsided rapidly. Within a short two months her headaches largely disappeared into the rear-view mirror. One year after therapy she was blessed with a baby girl. Six years after she finished therapy, I checked in with her again as I was finishing my headache book. She no longer suffered from headaches and had added three children to her family!
How Do I know If I Have Muscle Misfiring?
Read my headache book, Chapter 7, to learn more about muscle misfiring. Look up the writings of Vladimir Janda, the Czechoslovakian physiotherapist who investigated extensively about these and other complicated muscle imbalances.
Test yourself to determine if your muscles are firing in the proper sequence. Most people can quickly retrain their muscles to fire properly in just two or three physical therapy sessions. Natural treatments for headaches work, without the side effects medicine can produce!
-You understand that if not done properly, some techniques and exercises described in this blog could harm you. Any activities you perform are at your own risk, and you expressly agree to waive any claims against the author for any harm that may arise from your own actions. By reading this blog and conducting these exercises, you accept this risk. This blog provides content related to physical and/or mental health issues. As such, your use of techniques described acts as your acceptance of this disclaimer. Consult Chapter 2 in my book, “Calming the Headache Storm” to make sure the headache is not the sign of a more serious problem. The techniques, advice and strategies contained in this blog may not be suitable for every individual and should be abandoned if your headache increases. Seek the advice of your physician.
Thank you .It was really an interesting article.