Physical Therapy Services
Headaches
Natural headache relief through Fascial Counterstrain.
Headaches
More than 45 million Americans suffer from headaches each year, and nearly 8 million of them seek the help of a medical professional to get relief from headache pain. The highly-skilled physical therapists, Gregory Trakhtenberg, MPT and Dmitry Shestakovsky, DPT, at Midtown East Physical Therapy in New York City provide natural headache pain relief through the Fascial Counterstrain (FCS) technique.
How It Works
How we treat headaches
Headache is treated here as a problem to be assessed rather than a diagnosis to be accepted. The therapist examines the neck, jaw, upper back and the soft tissue structures around them, looking for restriction and tenderness that reproduce or contribute to your headache pattern, and treats what the examination finds — commonly using Fascial Counterstrain.
The work is hands-on and performed with you lying down. Because structures in the neck and jaw can refer symptoms into the head, treatment often takes place away from where you feel the headache.
What It Addresses
What headache treatment here addresses
Manual treatment for headache is used to address presentations like these. Whether it is appropriate for your headache is decided at your evaluation.
- Headache associated with neck stiffness, jaw tension or upper back restriction
- Headaches that follow a desk day, a long commute or sustained screen posture
- Headache patterns that persist after other causes have been investigated
- Patients looking for a manual, non-pharmacological approach alongside their medical care
What to Expect
One-on-one care, built around you
Your care begins with a one-on-one evaluation. Rather than focusing on the symptoms alone, we establish a cause and effect relationship through accurate palpation and assessment of the body, then build a rehabilitation program customized to your individual needs.
- A detailed history: where the headache sits, what precedes it, how long it lasts, and what changes it. This is what separates a mechanically driven pattern from one that is not.
- Hands-on examination of the neck, jaw and upper back, including palpation of the tender points that mark tissue in spasm.
- Manual treatment in the same visit, plus a look at the postures and workstation habits that keep loading the region.
- A referral back to your physician if anything in the history or examination suggests the headache needs medical investigation rather than manual treatment.
Common Questions
Questions we are asked about Headaches
- Can physical therapy help any kind of headache?
- No, and that is why the first visit is an assessment. Manual treatment addresses headache that involves the neck, jaw and surrounding soft tissue. Headaches with other causes need medical management, and if the examination points that way we will tell you and send you back to your physician.
- Why is the therapist working on my neck and not my head?
- Structures in the neck, jaw and upper back can produce symptoms felt in the head. Treatment is aimed at the structures the examination implicates, which is frequently not where the pain is felt.
- Do I have to stop my headache medication?
- Nothing here replaces the care your physician has put in place, and medication decisions are theirs, not ours. Bring a list of what you take so it forms part of the picture.
- What should I bring to the first visit?
- If you can, keep a short note for a week or two before you come in of when the headaches occur, how long they last and what you were doing beforehand. Also bring any imaging or specialist reports, your medication list and your insurance card.
- Is it covered by insurance?
- We accept major insurance providers, but coverage for headache treatment varies by plan, and some plans ask for a physician's referral or prescription while others do not. Call (212) 922-0044 before your first visit and we will confirm your coverage and tell you what, if anything, you need to bring.
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