Rolf Structural Integration: The Most Effective Migraine Treatment That You've Never Heard Of
And How It Works
After I started practicing some years ago I noticed that many people would come in with one problem and leave cured of many others. People had no idea the scope of what Structural Integration can do to improve their lives. One of the most profound benefits that I started noticing that people were having was in regards to migraines.
Client after client would come in to have their low back or some unrelated area worked on and find that after as little as one session they no longer had migraines. Many of these people had been suffering for up to decades, some since as young as 6 years old, and happened to discover that a side effect of the treatment they were seeking to relieve tension in the back had the unexpected result of relieving their headaches.
As this phenomena began to occur regularly I did more and more research to understand and explain why this was so effective when nothing else had worked for these people.
Structural Integration (SI) is a process of structurally realigning the muscles and skeletal system to bring maximum balance and ease into all systems of the body. But why does it cure headaches?
This is what I found:
Migraines are caused by restricted blood-flow to the brain and related nerve dysfunction. Beyond that it gets a bit mysterious and much of the information available seems to indicate that migraines are not very well understood. Because of my success with headaches clearing up during the course of treatment I hypothesized how SI works on headaches. My theory was that through the decompression of the myofascial system combined with the realignment of the bone structures that compressed the nerves and blood-flow to the brain, space was created to restore normal function to the nerves and arteries that supply the brain.
As I researched more I came across research by migraine expert Dr. John Hamalghi. Although he does not go into treatment options, his work explains the mechanics of how and why Structural Integration is the perfect treatment for migraines. This demystifies why such excellent results have been achieved as a result of SI. Dr. Hamalghi explains that the cause of this restricted blood flow is linked to genetically inherited structural imbalance in the skeletal system, passed from one generation to the next.
According to Dr. Halmaghi's website their clinical experience is that over 75% of patients require Physical Medicine intervention to treat postural imbalances. Structural Integration is one of the most powerful treatments that exist to correct postural imbalance, also making it incredibly effective for scoliosis.
The next important consideration is that migraine sufferers often resort to drugs, from OTC NSAIDs such as Ibuprofen, to prescription Narcotics like Vicodin, and lastly migraine specific medications such as Imitrex. All these drugs have three things in common:
- These medications have not proven to be successful long term treatments to manage migraine pain.
- They do not aim to treat the root cause of the headaches.
- Long term use of medications can actually make pain and symptoms worse!
The primary cause of migraines is actually muscular imbalance which compresses skeletal structures thereby reducing the flow of blood into the head, and altering the electrochemistry of the cranial region.
Research shows that a migraine sufferer is subject to perpetual muscle spasms in the jaw and cranium. This can start out as stress which causes clenching, and a strained posture, or orthodontic braces which shift the organization of the bones of the maxilla. Regardless of the cause, this muscle tension shifts the skeletal alignment (posture) and causes compensation patterns throughout the body that reinforce the misalignment that restricts blood-flow and alters nerve activity in the brain. The migraine sufferer typically has undiagnosed imbalance of the cranium (skull) and jaw as a result of the tension caused by braces or stress and postural misalignment. As you can now understand, a drug is incapable of treating the musculoskeletal imbalance which is the root cause of migraines.
Muscle tension in those with migraines is often so chronic that the person is unaware that it even exists. However, you can notice how often your teeth are touching. This requires contraction of the jaw muscles. If your teeth are almost always touching you are no doubt experiencing chronic tension in your jaw muscles. The cramping of the muscles in the face can be experienced as the severe disabling pain that causes nausea, altered vision and all of the other associated symptoms. Stress causes tension, and tension causes stress so it becomes a vicious cycle that ends up facilitating chronic migraines unless the cycle is interrupted.
Based on the most up to date research, the medical community has reached a general consensus that the trigeminal neurovascular complex is involved in all migraine activity. The trigeminal complex is made up of the trigeminal neural system and related blood vessels. The trigeminal nerve controls the blood flow of arteries within the brain, and is also one of the most important pain signaling systems in the brain. The brain spends over 40% of its energy interpreting the impulses created by the trigeminal nerve. The trigeminal is the main nerve of the head, jaw and neck sending pain signals to the central nervous system. When irritated by TMJ problems and high levels of myofascial tension around the jaw, the trigeminal begins to send continuous signals to contract blood vessels, and increase muscle activation. This explains the vascular headache that you may have heard of. Dysfunction anywhere along its route can cause a migraine. The trigeminal ganglion (nerve cluster) sits right at the top of the jaw where it is subject to all of the stress and tension across the temporomandibular joint and any associated dysfunction which further irritates the trigeminal nerve. Interestingly the location of the trigeminal ganglion is located approximately where migraneuers touch their temples in popular photo depictions.
Migraines and other types of head pain are a symptom of musculoskeletal imbalance between the head, neck and shoulders which irritate the nerves of the region. This imbalance and the dysfunction of the trigeminal and other nerves results in abnormal and continuous muscle spasms. It is important to understand that the balance between the head and neck is also determined by the rest of the body.
I once had a client who had exceptionally severe migraines starting around age 16. The same age as one of her feet unexplainably lost its arch and went flat. The imbalance created a complex compensation pattern that travelled up the legs causing one hip to be lower on the side of the flat foot. The back had to compensate for the unlevel hips, which created imbalance in the shoulders and neck upon which the head sat misaligned along with resulting tension in the head. I first put the arch back into the foot, which is nothing short of a miracle. Then, the entire myoskeletal system had to be reorganized from the ground up so as to correct all of the compensatory patterns that had formed as a result of the flat foot. Once all was in order the migraines began to subside and continued to improve for months after the treatment was over as the body continued to return to normal function. She went from chronic migraines 24/7 and only 2 hours of sleep per night to one or two days of migraines a month and she was able to stop taking her medication.
This story demonstrates how the body cannot be separated into parts. Even if the trigeminal nerve dysfunction is causing the headaches because of muscular tension in the head neck and jaw, that tension may be the result of an imbalance as far away as the foot. For permanent results the whole system must be taken into consideration. Imbalance anywhere in the body is spread through the whole system, so everything must be put into order for best results. Often the results come much faster, however it is still advisable to continue a full course of treatment, (usually 10 sessions) to make sure the problem does not come back.
If people seeking relief from back or neck pain have been able to experience the side-effect of eliminating seriously life altering migraines, imagine what kind of side-effects you might enjoy. Better yet, find out here.
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