Neck rolls gave me nasty migraine. WTF?

I was feeling perfectly fine, no head pain all day. I showered, did some stretching, then did three full neck rolls in each direction. A few minutes later, WHAM, I got smacked w/ a high level migraine. Thinking back, I think this has happened before and I didn't make the connection.

Does this make sense to anyone?

Yes.

I know that for me neck issues (Cervical Spondylosis) make my migraines worse.

Neck pain intensifies head pain, and head pain intensifies neck pain. An ongoing vicious cycle.

I can relate to this, although it's just been recently that I've begun experiencing neck pain with my headaches.

I could do anything that extended my neck. It definitely triggers a migraine.  PT made things much worse.  I eventually bought a car with a rear backing camera and saved myself a lot of problems.    Not irritating it backing out of the driveway everyday and being careful about turning my head finally allowed it to heal and the inflammation to go down.    I don't have as trouble as I used to now.

long, long ago, before i even had migraines, i had some yoga classes, and tried to follow the neck exercises at home.  it seemed like such a good idea.....not if a person has any neck issues, though.

at least in my case, even the smallest neck motions made my neck hurt like crazy. 100 years later, i found i had a badly squished disc, high up at C3-4. unless there's a sudden trauma, these things happen pretty slowly, i think.

i had ACDF (discectomy and fusion with titanium implants and cadaver bone) 9 years ago and all is well, at least if i don't look up at ceilings nor twist too much.  dianne  

p.s. all the things which normally help other people, make me worse.  like physical therapy.  so NOBODY touches my neck anymore........

Neck rolls are definitely a no-no for me. In fact any over enthusiastic exercise (on purpose, or not) in the neck area is asking for trouble, as far as M is concerned in my experience.

Although I found that one exercise, where you try to lower your chin by pressing it towards the front of the neck quite hard, can have in fact have very beneficial effect as it stretches the tense muscle at the back of the neck and this can be quite helpful for me to relieve the tense feeling. This was shown to be by my physiotherapist, and I've tried it many times.

But it must be carried out slowly and carefully, and at the first sign of any discomfort it is best to leave it alone.

Thanks everyone!

-Platy