Holistic Health Research Report

Having a headache is one of the most common ways of affecting peoples lives. For years headaches have been putting people in bad moods, causing fights, and even causing serious health problems. Let me start by describing what is a headache and the types. A headache is a pain in the head caused by dilation of cerebral arteries or muscle contractions or a reaction to drugs (Diamond & Falk,1982). There are many types of headaches people get, here are some and what they are. A migraine is thought to be associated with an abnormal spasm of the blood vessels in the brain and is therefore referred to as a "vascular headache". A tension headache, which used to be referred to as a "muscle contraction headache", is associated with tension in muscles of the head and neck. A sinus headache is pain located in your forehead bone, the cheek bone on each side, and behind the bridge of your nose due to a sinus blockage (Diamond & Falk,1982). People need to know that you should never ignore a pain, that's your bodies way of telling you something's wrong. Headaches can effect our moods, feelings, and our over all health. Much through our lives we all get at least a couple of headaches, and some times we get one so bad that no matter what we're doing it's going to put us in a bad mood. The American Council for Headache Education reported that in the last year roughly 90% of men and 95% of women had at least one headache. If that was a survey for most anything else we would all be amazed and shocked, but the headache is often passed off as a minor annoyance (Diamond & Falk,1982). There are many treatments out there and the purpose of this paper is to see if three alternative methods of treatments which are Acupuncture, Massage therapy, and behavioral medicine work to prevent and treat headaches. Acupuncture is a alternative medicine, long dismissed by mainstream doctors, is getting a second look as many people in the United States have turned to acupuncture to treat a variety of

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