Yes. Neck pain is a well-recognized source of headaches, and when a headache originates in the neck it is called a cervicogenic headache. The nerves supplying your upper neck and the nerves supplying your head converge on the same relay station in the brainstem, which means your brain can genuinely have trouble telling the difference between a neck signal and a head signal.

The practical consequence is that a headache can be felt in the head while the actual problem sits below it.

If you have had headaches for years, and you also have a neck that has never felt quite right, those two facts are probably related.

What this actually is

A cervicogenic headache typically has a recognizable pattern. It often starts at the base of the skull and spreads forward behind the eye, across the temple, sometimes into the jaw. It is frequently one-sided and tends to stay on the same side. It can be provoked by neck movement or by holding one position too long, and it commonly comes with reduced neck mobility.

This pattern is different from a typical migraine, though the two can overlap and can coexist in the same person. That overlap is one reason cervicogenic headaches are often missed or treated as something else for years.

The relay station involved is called the trigeminocervical complex, where sensory input from the upper cervical spine and from the trigeminal nerve the main sensory nerve of the face and head converge. Because those signals share a pathway, irritation from the neck can be perceived as pain in the head. This is referred pain, and it is a normal feature of how the nervous system is wired rather than anything exotic.

What happens when it persists

Most people manage. They take something over the counter, they push through, they learn which positions make it worse and quietly stop using them.

Over months and years, a few things tend to compound.

The neck gets stiffer, because painful joints get guarded and guarded joints lose motion. Medication use often creeps upward, and with frequent use, rebound headaches can become part of the picture the treatment starts contributing to the problem.

Meanwhile the headaches become an expected part of the week. People stop reporting them accurately, even to themselves. Asked how often they get headaches, they will say “not that often” and then, pressed for a number, land somewhere around four days out of seven.

What it costs over time if it is not addressed

A headache four or five days a week is not a small thing, but because it is invisible and because the person has adapted, it rarely gets counted properly.

What it actually costs: concentration at work, patience at home, the willingness to make evening plans. People decline things without quite knowing why they are declining them. They become someone who does not commit to much, because committing means risking a day when they cannot deliver.

Sleep is usually compromised, both by the neck itself and by a nervous system that has been braced all day. Poor sleep lowers pain threshold, which makes the next day’s headache more likely. That loop is self-sustaining.

And there is a quieter cost: the slow conclusion that this is permanent. That headaches are simply part of your constitution. That is the belief we most want to interrupt, because it usually is not true it is just what happens when a problem goes unexamined long enough.

The reframe

The question worth asking is not “which medication manages this best.”

It is: why hasn’t your body healed this problem?

Something is maintaining it. A structure that never fully recovered, a movement pattern that keeps re-irritating the same tissue, or a nervous system that has become efficient at producing this signal. Finding what is maintaining it is a different project than suppressing the output. That question is the starting point for the Omega Method, our approach to figuring out what is actually going on before recommending care.

What may actually be driving it

Three places to look, and most care examines only the last one.

Tissue in the neck that never resolved. The suboccipital muscles at the base of the skull, the upper trapezius, and the sternocleidomastoid running along the side of the neck are all common contributors to head pain. These muscles can develop persistent trigger points and areas of poor tissue quality that have been present so long the person no longer registers them as abnormal until pressure is applied and they discover the spot is exquisitely tender.

Balance system load. This is the connection almost nobody makes. If the vestibular system is underperforming, the brain compensates by leaning harder on neck and eye input to know where the head is in space. That means the deep neck muscles work harder, all day, for years. They are not overworked because of poor posture in the way it is usually described they are overworked because they are covering for a system that is not carrying its share. Treating those muscles without addressing why they are overworking gives relief that keeps fading.

Whole-body tension patterns. Load travels. A pattern established lower in the body can increase tension through the connective-tissue network into the neck and jaw, meaning the neck is the place the problem surfaces rather than the place it starts.

When the balance system is involved, headaches are rarely the only sign neck pain and dizziness frequently occur together for the same reason. Jaw tension is another common companion, which is why TMJ problems and neck pain often travel as a pair. And if you tend to wake with head pain, sleeping with neck pain covers why morning headaches and night-time neck pain usually share a driver.

How we approach it at Omega Functional Health

We test rather than assume. Using Cognuro, we assess how the eyes, inner ear, and body position sense are working together the system that determines how much compensating your neck is being asked to do. This is not part of a standard headache workup anywhere, and it frequently changes the picture.

Where there is genuine tissue involvement, focused shockwave therapy can be applied directly to the affected structures. Focused shockwave uses the same underlying technology as lithotripsy the treatment used to break up kidney stones but at low energy. Rather than breaking tissue apart, it is used to reduce inflammation, improve blood flow, and stimulate the body’s own repair response.

Where the balance system is contributing, care may include the Gravity Reset Method in office along with specific home exercises drawn from your test results.

A typical course of shockwave care runs somewhere in the range of six to twelve sessions, though this varies and depends on what we find.

How long does it take for neck-related headaches to improve?

This varies considerably and honest answers are individual, but a few patterns are common.

Many people notice some change within the first several visits often improved neck mobility before the headaches themselves change much. Headache frequency tends to shift before headache intensity does. Longstanding problems generally take longer than recent ones.

Anyone offering you a guaranteed timeline is guessing. What we can commit to is measuring, so that if something is not working we know it early rather than after twenty visits.

Does this replace conventional medical care?

No.

A sudden severe headache unlike any you have had before, a headache with fever and neck stiffness, headache following significant head trauma, or headache with neurological changes such as weakness, vision loss, confusion, or difficulty speaking requires emergency evaluation. Some headaches signal serious conditions and those must be ruled out through appropriate medical care.

Neurologists, primary care physicians, and headache specialists do essential work. Our contribution is a different assessment lens, most useful for people whose evaluations came back unremarkable while the headaches continued.

Who this may help

• Adults with headaches accompanied by neck pain or stiffness
• Headaches that begin at the base of the skull and travel forward
• Headaches consistently on one side
• Headaches provoked by neck position or sustained postures
• People whose headaches began after a car accident or head or neck injury
• Anyone relying on over-the-counter medication several days a week
• People whose headache workups have been unremarkable

What does the research say?

Evidence supporting shockwave therapy for myofascial pain in the neck and shoulder region is reasonably encouraging.

A 2020 meta-analysis of eleven randomized controlled trials found extracorporeal shockwave therapy produced meaningful improvements in pain intensity and pressure pain threshold for myofascial pain syndrome in the neck and shoulder. Notably for our purposes, subgroup analysis found focused shockwave specifically performed well on both measures. Effects on neck disability scores were not statistically significant, which is a real limitation worth stating.

A randomized controlled trial published in 2025 compared shockwave therapy with manual therapy applied to active trigger points in the sternocleidomastoid muscle in people with cervicogenic headache, using shear wave elastography to measure tissue stiffness an example of the growing interest in objectively measuring what these treatments do to tissue.

Research connecting the cervical spine to head pain via the trigeminocervical complex is well established across the headache literature.

As always: promising, not definitive. Sample sizes are frequently modest and protocols vary between studies.

If this sounds like your situation

If you have been managing headaches for years and your neck has been quietly part of the story, the useful next step is finding out what is actually driving the pattern.

Every person is different and we cannot promise a particular outcome but we can tell you what we find, and build your care around it. Omega Functional Health serves Wheat Ridge, Denver, Arvada, Lakewood, Golden, Littleton, and surrounding Colorado communities.

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References

• Jun JH, et al. The Effect of Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy on Pain Intensity and Neck Disability for Patients With Myofascial Pain Syndrome in the Neck and Shoulder: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. 2021;100(2):120-129. PMID: 32520797
• Comparison of extracorporeal shock wave therapy and manual therapy on active trigger points of the sternocleidomastoid muscle in cervicogenic headache: A randomized controlled trial. 2025. PMID: 40270630
• Luan S, et al. The effects of shock wave and dry needling on active trigger points of upper trapezius muscle in patients with non-specific neck pain: A randomized clinical trial. Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation. 2019. PMID: 30883334
• Li Y, Yang L, Dai C, Peng B. Proprioceptive Cervicogenic Dizziness: A Narrative Review of Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Journal of Clinical Medicine. 2022;11(21):6293. doi:10.3390/jcm11216293