How Trigger Point Injections can Alleviate Headache and Migraine Pain

If you're suffering from headache or migraine pain, trigger point injections may be a solution that can work for you. Your trigger points, located in your muscles, create effects around your body, including headache pain. Nebben Physical Medicine of Clarksville, Tennessee, offers trigger point injections as a treatment for headaches and migraines. By manipulating trigger points around your body, we can release tension and prevent headaches for weeks at a time.

Echo effects

The sensitive trigger points in your muscles don't just affect the individual muscle area. Tension in your trigger points can produce pain results in many locations in your body. Your head and neck are some of the most likely locations where you may experience pain like this, called “referred pain.”

Your trigger points respond irritably to stimulation. Events like trauma, injuries, or inflammation can cause echo effects of pain through your body. Often, persistent headaches can be traced back to a trigger point somewhere in your body. Patients who get the best results with trigger point injections will have specific trigger points that we can identify through a physical examination.

Taming your triggers

When you come in for a trigger point injection, we use a medication to provide relief to irritated trigger points. The injection of pain-relieving medication can give you immediate results, not only in the treated area, but for pain in your head, face, and neck, as well. If you have severe pain from a headache or migraine attack, try trigger point injections for immediate relief.

During the procedure, we use a small needle to deliver a targeted dose of pain-relieving medication, often a local anesthetic, more rarely a steroid, to a trigger point in one of your muscles. You won't need any prep time, and don't need any sedation. You sit or lie down during the injection. To prevent infection and bleeding, we clean the treatment area thoroughly before administering each injection and apply pressure afterward. If needed, we can deliver multiple injections to give you relief from stubborn pain.

Immediate potential results

Your pain may recede right away after the injection, although trigger point injections are not effective for all patients, and for some, will not produce significant results. You may have some mild side effects, including temporary feelings of pain and numbness at the injection site. Some people experience some light-headedness after an injection. You can get back to work or daily life right away after your appointment, and the beneficial effects can last for weeks.

To explore trigger point injection as a solution to your headache or migraine problems, get in touch with Nebben Physical Medicine today. Our experienced care team, led by Dr. John Bassell, MD and founder Loren Nebben, DC, has been helping patients deal with headache pain for decades with cutting-edge and traditional treatment methods. To schedule your appointment, call our office, or use the online booking tool.