Headaches

Headaches are close to universal. Across 357 studies, 52% of people worldwide have an active headache disorder, and on any given day 15.8% of the world has a headache. Tension-type headache accounts for 26% and migraine for 14%.^[1]

Tension-type headache is the common one: pressing or tightening pain on both sides, mild to moderate, usually without the nausea and the light and sound sensitivity that mark out migraine. Several things are associated with it at once — tender muscles and trigger points, changes in how the nervous system handles pain, genetics, and anxiety or low mood. It is not a condition with one mechanical cause.^[2]

Some headaches genuinely do come from the neck. Cervicogenic headache is real but uncommon: the only systematic review of the question calls it rare, reporting a population prevalence of 3.9% and a relative frequency of about 3.1% among headache clinic patients, mostly in women. Figures of 15% to 20% circulate widely on chiropractic websites and that review does not support them.^[3]

The first job is working out which kind of headache you have, because that is what decides everything else — and because a new or changed headache is worth a proper look rather than a guess.^[4]

Where a headache is coming from the neck, Cochrane’s review of exercise for mechanical neck disorders is the honest summary: no high-quality evidence was found, so uncertainty remains, and using specific strengthening exercises as part of routine practice for chronic neck pain, cervicogenic headache and radiculopathy may be beneficial. That is a “may”, from reviewers who say out loud how uncertain they are — and an exercise you can do yourself costs nothing to try.^[5]