Or find out why
it keeps coming back.

Reaching for paracetamol on autopilot every few days isn't a treatment plan — it's just managing the symptom. A surprising proportion of headaches (including a chunk of what gets labelled 'migraine') have a musculoskeletal driver that responds beautifully to hands-on care.

What's actually triggering your headaches

Headaches have many possible causes, but the most common mechanical drivers we see in clinic are:

• Suboccipital tension — tight muscles at the base of the skull referring pain up over the top of the head (the classic 'band around the temples')
• Stiff upper cervical joints (C1-C3) — a well-documented driver of cervicogenic headaches and some migraine types
• Jaw and TMJ dysfunction — clenching and grinding loading muscles that share nerves with the head and neck
• Forward head posture — every inch the head sits forward of neutral roughly doubles the load on the upper neck
• Shoulder and upper back load — tight, overworked shoulder muscles refer tension upward
• Eye strain compounded by neck tension — a particularly common combination in screen-heavy work

How we treat the cause, not the symptom

Our approach is to look at the whole system referring pain into your head:

1. Map your triggers. When the headaches come, how they feel, what makes them better or worse — patterns that often go unnoticed by you tell us a lot.
2. Examine the relevant areas. Upper neck, suboccipital muscles, jaw, shoulders, upper back, posture under load.
3. Treat what we find. Gentle joint mobilisation, soft-tissue release, cranial techniques where appropriate.
4. Address the drivers. Posture, workstation setup, sleep position, screen habits, breathing — whatever's keeping the cause alive.

For many patients, that means fewer headaches, milder ones when they do come, and the freedom to plan a day without 'in case' tucked in.