Headaches: What a Pain in the Neck!

The tension in your neck may be causing your headaches. How to break the cycle.

ByABC News
February 18, 2009, 9:18 PM

Feb. 18, 2008 — -- It's 2 a.m. and you're waking up in pain. You reach to your neck, and you can't move your head.

Was it the way you slept last night? Or did you twist the wrong way when reaching into the back seat while driving? Perhaps it's the way you hold your phone at work?

The fact is that even the simplest movements can cause short periods of neck pain. Yet some of us may actually be experiencing chronic neck pain.

Simple movements can lead to muscle tightness, which can take time to show symptoms, and muscle strain, which usually happens as an acute occurrence.

Headaches that stem from neck pain are found mostly in individuals who have tightness in the posterior neck muscles, which are at the back of the neck. This is mainly brought about by a forward-headed body posture and rounded back the very posture you may be assuming as you read this article!

This causes the cervical spine (the top seven vertebrae in the spinal column) to be positioned into extension. This position causes the neck flexors (the muscles in front of your neck) to lengthen and the muscles in the back of your neck to shorten.

This forced position puts a strain on the occipital nerve, which is a sensory and motor nerve that runs through these now-shortened muscles. In many cases, this can cause headaches.

That's not to say that all headaches generated this way are the same. One form of headache that finds its origins in the neck muscles is the occipital headache, in which muscles in the neck put pressure on specific nerves, resulting in a migraine-type experience.

Tension headaches, on the other hand, are thought by many to be a result of general muscle tension in the head and are brought about by the faulty posture of the head, neck and upper posterior neck muscles.

In both cases, stretching the tight muscles along the back of your neck, as well as strengthening the muscles at the front of the neck and improving body posture in general, can help to release this pain.