Heads and necks. Which is cause and which effect?

I have been reading an article (which I now cant find) that says that it isnt the neck that causes the head, it is the other way around.
Bad positions of neck, tight muscles, etc.
Would you all agree with that?

I ask because I know a migraine is coming and it is in my neck on the right.
I also now have some pain in my upper teeth and eyebrow.

So this is starting in my neck......
Doesnt always but how is it for you???

Thanks
Pen

For years I thought my neck problems were causing the headaches. If I turned my head too much or looked at the ceiling I would get a headache guaranteed. I even bought a car with a rear backing camera so I wouldn't trigger a headache backing out of the driveway.

Interestingly enough since I have gotten the daily headaches under control I have very little or no neck pain anymore. And it pretty much always hurt before. In hindsight I am pretty sure it was the migraine syndrome causing the neck pain all along.

None of the two.
I guess that the cause is our TRESK gene.
My migraine often start in the neck, too but I don't think that it's due to anything that I do (position, contraction...). I think it's just the chemical rollercoaster caused by our fawled gene that gives pain here and there.

I have to agree with Ivy - I don't get neck pain or issues with that.

Thanks. I always thought it was my neck causing the head, and it might be, but lately I can see how badly I hold my neck when my head hurts. So it could easily be the other way around.

As for the TRESK gene. I am not sure abut that, are you?
I have no other migrainers in the family and they have made quite a lot of that.

I am waiting for them to say that migraine is a symptom as well as a stand alone.
That might fit me in...

Neck pain can be a symptoms of a Migraine attack without any posture or other neck issues. A recent study showed that neck pain is a Migraine symptoms even more commonly than nausea. http://www.healthcentral.com/migraine/understanding-migraine-523911-5.html

Yes, I saw that Teri. But what do you say about the neck pains starting because of what we do to our necks trying to cope with the migraines?

Pen

Hi All,

It is kind of like the chicken and the egg question- "Which came first?" I don't know.

I think for many of us it is combination of chemical ractions in the brain, nerves going crazy, and affecting the neck. Sometimes you feel it in the neck, sometimes the head.

From the time I was born, my mother said "there is something wrong with her neck." She also noticed that I would scream bloody murder when she washed my hair, even as an infant. I am the third child and Mom is a pediatrician, so she thought it was odd from day one. When I was 10 or 11, she took me to an orthopedist, who said it was nothing, I ended up wearing her old back brace to see if that would help, it did not. I have always had a head forward position.

When the headaches became chronic, I never had neck pain at all. It took years for us to convince a doctor to look at my neck, just to see if it might be the problem. He then did a lidocaine block at C-2,C-3, which worked. This was followed by bilateral radiofrequency to c-2,c-3, which led to my first period of remission and two years later to the occipital nerve stimulator. The wires are not in my neck, but sit at the crown of the head over the occipital nerve cluster. It helps tremendously.

The only thing I do notice is that putting ice on my neck or back of my head helps.

I think it just depends where you feel the pain. It is all related to migraine. Neck pain, in my opinion can be referred pain from migraine and certainly the way we tend to hold our heads during migraine can effect neck pain as well. During a migraine, my head feel very heavy, like it weighs a ton and I tend to carry my head lower or tilt it depending on the migraine.

So, I don't know. I think we are finding out more all the time. i am cetainly beginning to think that I might even have had this condition from birth, though I did not get my first migraine until age 12.

Pain free days,
sailingm

Interesting, thank you. I might add that a while back there was quite a discussion on our MA forum about forceps deliveries and difficult births. Ignoring the rest of the discussion there. I wonder what kind of start all that is on a neck....

P

sailingmuffin - Your story parallels mine, except my headaches did not start until I was in my 20's. I too have had injections in my neck, but all they did is give me a three day stiff neck with the pain equal to the migraines!

I feel like we are all guinea pigs for a disease that is a relentless tormentor.

Sailing it's interesting that you had your injections at c2/c3.
Mine are fused from birth.
I only found this out when I went looking through old tests/xrays myself this year for the elusive answer.
None of the chiro's or doctors I have been to over the years and have seen my xrays have ever pointed it out to me so I didn't feel it relevant when I found it.
Recently though I am beginning to wonder, so I showed it to my gp and she just shrugged it off as unimportant.
I really am wondering though, but not sure who to question.