Migraines in Warren, Ohio: What We Look For When the Medication Has Not Worked

If you have had migraines for years and medication has not solved them, the useful question is not which prescription to try next. It is what is causing them in the first place. That is where we start at Back 2 Health Chiropractic in Warren. Everyone responds differently, but some patients who arrive after years of headaches finish care and never get another one.

Migraines are one of the most common things we see in this office. Most people who come to us have already tried several medications, and some of those came with side effects they did not want. They have missed work. Many have missed out on quality family time, and that is usually the part that bothers them most when they finally sit down and describe it.

Why has the medication not fixed it?

Medication is aimed at the migraine once it has started. That is genuinely useful when you are in the middle of one and you need to function. But if the migraines keep coming back, something is producing them, and managing the episode does not change whatever that something is.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A patient can do everything they were told to do for years, take everything they were told to take, and still be no further ahead, because nothing in the plan was ever aimed at the cause. When somebody tells me they have tried everything, what they usually mean is that they have tried everything aimed at the symptom.

What we look at first

We start with your health history, your symptoms and your health goals. Then we look at how your spine, nervous system and joints are working together, because those three are not separate systems and a headache is rarely a problem that lives only in your head.

For headache patients that usually means close attention to the neck. The structures at the top of the neck refer pain into the head in patterns that people often recognize the moment you describe them out loud. We use x-ray imaging when it is warranted, so that decisions get made on what is actually there instead of on a good guess.

Then we explain it to you. That is not a courtesy step at the end of the exam. If you do not understand what is causing your problem, you cannot make a real decision about what to do next, and you certainly cannot tell whether the plan is working. We take the time to explain what we find, and we explain what it takes to correct it.

What happens once care starts

Once we determine the cause of the migraines and we begin care, most patients' migraines are completely resolved or greatly improved. Some of these patients never get another migraine again. Although everyone responds differently, that is the pattern this office sees most often.

There is a second thing that comes up repeatedly and patients rarely expect it. Most get relief from neck pain, sleep issues and fatigue as well. People come in counting headaches on a calendar and end up mentioning, almost in passing, that they are sleeping through the night again.

How long am I going to be coming in?

This is the question people are most reluctant to ask out loud, usually because they have had a bad answer somewhere before.

Our goal is not to keep you coming in forever. It is to get you feeling better and to provide tools to manage your health in the future. Care here is tailored to the individual, because health care is not one size fits all, and a plan built around somebody else's spine is not a plan for yours. We use evidence-based care and specific scientific gentle adjusting techniques, and we aim to get the best results in the shortest time rather than the longest schedule.

What if chiropractic is not the answer for me?

Then we will tell you that.

If your problem is something that we can't help you with, we will get you to someone who can. Not every headache is a chiropractic case. Sending somebody down the wrong road for six weeks does not help them, and it is not how this office has operated for 39 years.

That is also why the first visit is worth having even if you are skeptical. You will leave knowing what is causing the problem and whether we are the right people to fix it. Those are two different answers and you are entitled to both.

Where to start

If you are in Warren, Howland, Niles, Cortland, Champion or anywhere in Trumbull County, and you have been managing migraines for longer than you would like to admit, the place to start is finding out what is behind them. That is one appointment and one honest conversation.

Dr. John Mistretta has practiced chiropractic for 39 years and has been part of the Howland area for 20 of them. Back 2 Health Chiropractic, 260 Niles Cortland Rd NE, Suite B, Warren, Ohio. Call the office at (330) 856-3236.