Can a Chiropractic Adjustment Help With Headaches?
If you suffer from regularly occurring headaches or migraines, you’ve likely tried anything and everything once or twice – medications, stretches, massage, different pillows, drinking more water and less coffee, but nothing has gotten you the results you're after for decreasing the intensity and frequency of your headaches.
One of the most common questions I hear as a chiropractor is “Can a chiropractor and our adjustments actually help with headaches?”
The short answer, ABSOLUTELY! Especially when headaches are related to the muscles of the neck, skull, and jaw, getting locked into desk postures for hours on end, chronic muscle tension in the traps and neck muscles, and an overload of stress on the nervous system.
But it's important to distinguish HOW and WHEN it helps, and WHO it’s best for.
Lemme break it down.
The Types of Headaches I Most Commonly Treat
In my practice, the vast majority of headaches I see fall into three categories:
Tension headaches: Often felt as a tight band around the head or pressure behind the eyes.
Cervicogenic headaches: Headaches that actually originate from dysfunction in the neck joints and surrounding tissues.
Migraines related to posture and stress: Especially those tied to long hours at a desk, driving, and chronic stress held in the neck, shoulders, and jaw.
In my experience, all of these headaches are often linked to:
Long-duration sitting postures (forward head posture and rounded shoulders)
Jaw clenching and grinding
Elevated sympathetic (“fight or flight”) nervous system tone
Chronic tightness in the suboccipital muscles at the base of the skull and the traps.
When these factors stack up over months or years, headaches can become more frequent, intense, and harder to manage with quick fixes.
Is the Adjustment Alone Enough?
This is an important distinction:
I do not use the chiropractic adjustment in isolation for headache treatment.
While spinal adjustments are one of the most powerful tools for restoring motion to restricted joints, unlocking a few joints wih an adjustment is stopping shy of the full power and effectiveness of the treatments that can be offered for more and quicker relief from your headaches.
In my clinic, headache care typically combines any or all of these:
Chiropractic adjustments
Hands-on soft tissue work (ART / Active Release Therapy)
Cupping
Rehab exercises
Breathing mechanics correction
Lifestyle modification coaching
The adjustment helps restore joint motion, reduce local inflammation and reduce protective guarding in the muscles while, the surrounding muscle work ensures that the joints actually stay unlocked for longer than a brief window in time. Home-exercise and lifestyle coaching ensure you can be helping yourself while not in the office for even longer lasting results!
A Real Migraine Case From My Practice
One of the most successful migraine cases I’ve worked with was a 32-year-old psychiatrist and department head at a local mental-health hospital. She came in dealing with debilitating migraines every couple of weeks that got severe enough that she regularly had to leave work early or call out sick to stay home in bed for the day until the bouts passed.
She had already tried medications, general massage, some basic stretches, cutting out wine andn coffee but nothing created lasting improvement in the intensity or frequency of these headaches.
After assessingn her in the office I found that she had significant neck and upper back joint restrictions, muscle tension in the suboccipitals, jaw, and traps, dysfunctional breathing patterns, high level stress and sympathetic tone.
For 4-6 visits we used our multi-pronged approach on the table and sent her home with exercises and lifestyle modifications and her migraines dropped in both intensity (needing to leave work → could manage to stick out the day with her exercises and some meds) and frequency (one every couple of weeks → once a month-6 weeks).
That’s the outcome we aim for at Trajectory, not just fewer symptoms, but more control over your own health!
How Quickly Do People Notice Results?
Most patients notice at least some initial change within 24–48 hours, or within the first one to two treatments, especially when they’re consistent with their at-home exercises.
That said, if someone has had headaches for years, it usually takes a bit more time to fully unlock restricted joints, retrain posture, muscle tone, and nervous system patterns – but results can be pretty quick!
What Actually Causes Most Headaches I See?
While every case is different, most of the headaches and migraines we see success with using our treatment combination share a few common contributors:
Long hours sitting at desks or in cars
Jaw tension and clenching
Chronic shallow/chest breathing
Tight traps
High stress jobs or lives
Restricted motion and tenderness in the upper cervical spine (where your neck meets your skull)
These factors overload the tissues of the upper neck and base of the skull, where there is a huge amount of neurological density (many nerves that sense what's going on and feed information forward to the brain). When that system and those tissues get irritated long enough, headaches shouldn't be a surprising consequence.
Important Red Flags: When You Should NOT See a Chiropractor First
Safety matters when seeking care and there are a few red flags you and your provider should be screening for when determining if you belong in their office or not.
There are certain headache presentations that require immediate medical evaluation and do not need chiropractic care first as they may be serious medical emergencies.
These include:
The worst, most debilitating headache you’ve ever experienced that comes on rapidly (thunderclap headache)
increasingly worsening neck stiffness with fever or illness (possible meningitis)
Neurological changes like slurred speech, facial droop, loss of coordination, or weakness
These can signal serious medical events such as stroke or infection, and should be evaluated and triaged in an emergency setting.
Chiropractic works best when appropriate — and knowing when you can manage somebody's condition or when a referral is necessary is part of responsible care.
Common Myths About Chiropractic and Headaches
One of the biggest fears around getting their necks adjusted people still have or hear is that chiropractic adjustments cause strokes or nerve damage.
This belief largely comes from outdated case reports, poor-quality data, and misunderstanding correlation vs. causation. Current evidence shows that the risk of serious adverse events from properly screened and applied neck adjustments is extremely low, the keywords here are "properly screened and applied”!
Many of the people these unfortunate accidents happen to actually seek care because they are already in the early stages of an event – the symptoms sound very similar to common headache and neck conditions chiropractors treat – and can later be misattributed to the visit or adjustment itself.
In clinical practice, a proper history and exam (your provider should be talking to you, asking questions, and examining you), red flag screenings, progression of forces (increasing intervention intensity to see how you respond, rather than jumping right to the thrusting force of an adjustment) and appropriate referrals are what make chiropractic care both effective and safe.
Who Is the Ideal Candidate for Chiropractic Headache Care?
People who respond best tend to be those who:
Have not fully resolved their headaches with medication alone, or meds don't seem to help at all.
Notice their headaches worsen with sustained sitting posture, stress, or long workdays
Have neck stiffness, jaw tension, or shoulder tightness
Want a solution that goes beyond just masking symptoms
Are willing to participate in rehab and lifestyle changes – not just passive treatment
If your headaches are purely hormonal, infectious, or vascular in origin, chiropractic may play a limited role. But for mechanical, stress-related, and posture-driven headaches, it can be an absolute game changer for getting you back to living without the cloud of chronic, recurring headaches or migraines.
Where to Go from Here
If you’re dealing with: persistent tension headache, neck-related headaches, migraines tied to posture or stress, and you feel like you’ve “tried everything,” it may be time for a different, more comprehensive approach.
You can:
Book an in-office assessment and treatment visit or
Call/Text us at (913)-353-6143 to talk through your symptoms and see if chiropractic care is a good fit for you!
Let’s have a real conversation about whether your headaches are something we can meaningfully improve, or find you the best place to keep looking for relief!