102. Chiropractic for Migraines: Help or Hype?

A lot of migraine sufferers are told their spine is out of alignment and that chiropractic care could be the missing piece. In this episode, I break down when chiropractic treatment can actually be helpful, when it may miss the real issue, and why alignment is sometimes only part of the picture. I also explain why some women feel better after an adjustment, while others end up triggered into a migraine afterward.

If you’ve ever wondered whether chiropractic care is worth trying for your migraines, this episode will help you think about it more clearly. I talk about the role of physical stress, why recurring misalignments may point to a deeper problem, and how to tell when chiropractic support makes sense versus when it’s probably not addressing the true root cause.

If you’re ready to address the root cause of your migraines, you can book a free consultation below.

https://www.drlesliecisar.com/apply

Free Training: 5 Proven Steps to Being Migraine Free (Even if you think you've already tried everything.)

https://www.drlesliecisar.com/5SHMN

Connect with us:

Website: https://www.drlesliecisar.com/

Free Facebook Group: Healing Migraines Naturally, with Leslie Cisar, ND

Ready to try something radically different that actually works? Read more about my approach here: https://www.drlesliecisar.com/map

In health,
Dr. Leslie Cisar

Episode Transcript

hi there
welcome to the Healing Migraines Naturally podcast
I'm your host Doctor Leslie Caesar
and I'm a licensed naturopathic doctor
former chronic migraine suffer
and I've dedicated my life to helping other women
with chronic migraines rediscover a migraine free life
so welcome to the podcast
great to have you here today
if you are a returning listener
and you're enjoying the information
please subscribe
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to get this information out
so today
we're going to talk about
chiropractic treatment and migraines
so I am a licensed naturopathic doctor
I went to the leading
naturopathic medical school called
Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine
now it's called Sonora University of Health Sciences
they recently changed their names
but um
Naturopathic medicine has always incorporated the
spinal adjustment techniques
and also other
you wanna say
joint adjustment techniques
from the chiropractic and osteopathic tradition
so naturopathic medicine
was sort of created or articulated over 100 years ago
and
the chiropractors
and the osteopaths were already on the scene
really the Genesis of naturopathic medicine was
to sort of unify the different um
what we would call natural medicine
therapies or what we would call natural medicine uh
theories of health and disease
at the time
they didn't really use the term natural medicine
but that's how we kind of talk about it today
so the naturopathic medicine movement
was founded by doctors who wanted to
sort of unify all of the different
like I say
we would call them natural medicine
practitioners that were around
the homeopaths the herbalists
there were some practitioners called the thompsonians
the osteopaths the chiropractors
the naturopathic medicine movement
was founded to really unify
all of
the different schools
and sort of in naturopathic medicine
we do have a unifying
view of what is health and disease
which that's one of the things
that I've talked about on the podcast
sort of the naturopathic approach
so um
you know within chiropractic right
they are really focusing on adjusting the vertebrae
so that the vertebrae are properly aligned
and within chiropractic theory of disease
with the belief that
if the nerves that are exiting the spinal cord
and going through
the little openings between the vertebrae
and going out and a nervating the body
if that nerve is not able to exit properly
if it's getting a little bit pinched
right
if the vertebrae are not lined up properly
and the little opening
which is called the foramen between the vertebrae
is not adequate and it's impinging on the nerve
you're not going to have proper nerve signaling
to that area of the body
and you're not going to have good function
so when we think of the nerves exiting our spinal cord
and kind of innervating our body
we think of it as okay
the nerves are going out into my arm and my legs
we kind of think of like our muscles
like our limbs being innervated by these nerves
but you have to also think about all the
internal organs
the nerves coming out of the vertebrae
sort of in your thoracic area
they're innervating you know
your lungs there's a vagus nerve
which is not
that's a cranial nerve that's coming out from the brain
it's not exiting through the foramen in the vertebrae
but you also so you have your Vegas nerve
which innervates your internal organs
but you also have the nerves that are coming out
through your spinal cord
through the foramen in your vertebrae
also innervating the internal organs
every area in your body
hi there
I wanna jump in real quick and tell you about my client
Beth she was getting 15 to 20 migraines and headaches
per month and as you can imagine
this was impacting her work
performance and her confidence
she also has two small children
and she was
starting to feel like she was a horrible mom
because she had nothing left for them
at the end of the day
but she reached out and she booked a free consult
call with me and after I asked her about her migraines
and her health history
I felt confident that I could help her
I help women uncover
the root drivers of their migraines
and follow a step by step plan to dramatically reduce
the frequency by up to 90%
without adding more medication
or taking a bunch of supplements
so we built her personal migraine map
followed the plan
and now she will get one to two migraines per year
which she uses ibuprofen to treat if she needs to
verses up to 15 to 20 per month
when we first started working together
that weren't responding well to any medication
she just reached out to tell me that
she got a promotion at work
she's on top of her career again
and has been able to come off
all of her migraine medication
but most importantly she's a confident mom again
and she's attending birthday parties at Jump Zone
with her kids and saying yes
instead of saying maybe later
I've worked with women like Beth
from all over the United States
who were told this is the best we can do
but they were still willing to dig deeper
so
if you are serious about changing your migraine story
go to Doctor Leslie Caesar dot com slash apply
or tap the link in the show notes
and on our free consult
we'll map out why your migraines keep coming back
and the first three steps you can take
over the next 30 days
I do cap new client spots each month
so if the calendar is full
the doors are closed for now
but if you're done feeling helpless
and ready to do the work to heal
pause this episode for 30 seconds
and book that console call now
so chiropractic theory of disease
is that disease starts
because there isn't proper nerve signaling to the area
due to what are called spinal subluxations
this is sort of like a misalignment in the vertebrae
in the spine impinging on the nerve
and so if you correct that
if you bring the spine into alignment
you're not going to have that impingement in the nerves
and then the
the nerve signaling is going to flow properly
and then
that area of the body is going to function optimally
okay now um
I think that there is definitely some truth to this
but it's not the whole picture okay
and this is one of the reasons why
the pioneers within naturopathic medicine
they took a close look at all these different schools
of what we would call natural medicine
and said okay
well you think disease is caused by this
and you think disease is caused by that
but let's look deeper
what's a unifying theory of health and disease
and that's really how naturopathic medicine was founded
so I think that there's some validity to this
but I don't think that the whole reason why we get sick
so a lot of chiropractors
will say that you are getting migraines
because your spine is out of alignment
now
you can definitely
feel when the vertebrae are out of alignment
I've been trained to palpate the spine
locate all of the different vertebrae and you
you can I I can tell you from personal experience
you can tell when they're out of alignment
and then there's techniques to
get them back into alignment
and you can tell the difference
if you palpate again if you feel it again
and you did the technique correctly
you can tell that okay yeah
this is actually lined up and again
I do believe that if your
spine is not in proper alignment
things are not gonna be optimal but the question is
why is your spine out of alignment
it's kind of a chicken and the egg question
the other thing you have probably noticed
if you've gone in for chiropractic treatment
is the chiropractor when you start off
they'll say okay
I need you to come in two or three times a week
because when you realign the vertebrae
the muscles in your spine have to hold the alignment
and this I think is not talked enough about okay
because again how did the spine get out of alignment
in the first place
if there was an accident if there was an injury right
I inadvertently bent over to pick something up and I
I heard a pop right
we can have some sort of injury or accident
that can pull things out of alignment
that that can happen and when it does
it's fantastic
if you have somebody with the skills and the knowledge
to be able to move that back
that's that's great but in chronic situations
how did this get out of alignment in the first place
the muscles in your spine are holding the vertebrae in
place
so we have to look at
are the muscles functioning properly
so if you have an injury
if you've been in an accident and
you know I've never been the same
since I was in that car accident
and I know I you know
have had a back problem since then
if you've never had a chiropractor or a traditional
you know well trained osteopath
look at the alignment of the the vertebrae or you know
maybe your rib cage right
other joints in your body
I would definitely recommend that you do that right
because if something is out of alignment anatomically
things are not gonna function optimally
that causes a physical stressor on our body
when we have an anatomical issue
and like I've talked about on the podcast
ultimately it's this
it's our lack of resilience
and vitality in the face of stressors
in this case would be a physical stress
that is driving the susceptibility to the migraine
but if that's not the case right
then it's not going to be very helpful to you
particularly if you have a chiropractor
that's in this straight school of thought okay
and is just all they're doing is adjusting
they're not addressing okay
why were these muscles
not able to hold the vertebrae in alignment
in the first place
that's what really has to be looked at and addressed
and you know
that's what I'm doing with my clients
I'm assessing okay do we have adequate nutrients
going to the cells
are we getting the waste material out of the cells
and out of the body
do we have adequate resilience and vitality
when I'm working with my clients
I'm assessing for these three principles
and determining exactly where we have deficiencies
or blockers and then
what's going to be the best way to address those things
when we do the body is going to respond
because that's what it's designed to do
and many people will you know
like they're turning their neck and oh
I hear the cracking right
you can
you know if things are a little glitchy in there
you can kind of tell yourself
if things are a little out of alignment
if your vertebrae is a little out of alignment
when we get those three things to the muscles
suddenly they start to hold better alignment okay
so
even when people have a misalignment in the vertebrae
and they're not able to get into the chiropractor
many times we see a noticeable improvement
less clicking less popping
a better range of motion
just by addressing these three principles
because again
when your muscles have what they need to function
optimally if they're the muscles
that are surrounding your vertebrae
they're gonna hold your vertebrae better
if you're just getting chiropractic
and nothing is being addressed
to make sure that the muscles have what they need to
support your vertebrae
you're going to be going in for a lot of adjustments
and not seeing a lot of improvement
so as far as you know
if I have a client you know
and they say well
should I get chiropractic care
the skill level of chiropractors
and traditional osteopaths
varies tremendously right
a very very skilled practitioner can be very
very valuable
I personally
have a very skilled osteopath that I see locally
and I take my daughter to
you know
she got injured in gym class a few years ago and
you know
she had a joint in her hand get out of alignment
I was able to bring her into him
and he was able to get that back into alignment right
this is really a godsend
when you have a really skilled practitioner because
yeah you can get injured
you know
you can have your anatomy get whacked out of alignment
it's very helpful to have someone on board
that can help you get that
brought back into alignment
so I don't
routinely recommend that people get chiropractic care
or osteopathic care
unless there's something in the history
that really points to it right
so again if there's an accident an injury
sort of one of those sort of red flag situations
and they've never been evaluated yeah
then you know
can we find someone local to you
because I can't do it for you over the phone
but is there someone local to you that's skilled
where we could get an evaluation done
but then again
I want to make sure that my client is getting
you know
good care from that local practitioner because again
sometimes the skill level may not be there
or the approach is
a little bit of a tunnel vision approach
if I have a client that is getting chiropractic care
and then we're working on making sure that
the muscles have what they need to hold the alignment
I've seen very very good results with that
and again I've had many clients
where they go into their chiropractor
you know maybe
they've been going to the chiropractor
for several years
we start working together
really start giving the body what it needs
and they go in for their routine
chiropractic appointment and the chiropractor says
oh wow
you held the adjustment
you've never held an adjustment this long right
the the chiropractor can feel the difference
can palpate the difference in the body
and that's really good feedback for me to hear too
because then it's more data for me to show that yes
we do have the right things in place
but you know
if someone's never gone to a chiropractor before
and we don't have sort of a smoking gun in the history
or a red flag in the history
I don't routinely recommend that people go um uh
can you get a migraine after a chiropractic adjustment
yep this has happened to people for sure because the um
it's a physical stressor you know
if your body is used to
holding something in a particular way
even if it's out of alignment
and then you change that
that's generating a physical stressor on the body
and you know
those of us that are prone to migraines
and we're in the throes of a chronic migraine state
any little thing can be enough of a stressor to kind of
tip us over into a migraine
so this again is another you know
consideration because
just getting the adjustment is going to generate
some stress some physical stress on the body
so I hope this was helpful for you
regarding chiropractic care and migraines
like I say I have
respect for the chiropractic profession
I think they have a lot to offer
but I think the original sort of theory of disease
of chiropractic there's some validity to it
but it's not the whole picture
so thanks for joining me today again
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