When stomach discomfort comes with headaches and fatigue

What follows combines several people's visits into one reconstructed account. It is not any one person's story, and anything that could identify someone has been removed.

How do people describe it when they come in?

They feel nauseous every time they eat, and in the afternoon a pain rises from the temples and spreads to the back of the head. They say they slept enough, yet they're already worn out in the morning.

Some come in for the stomach; others come for headaches, and the stomach comes up when we ask. They usually also mention stiffness from the neck to the shoulders.

Why do the stomach and head both suffer?

When the dome-shaped muscle you breathe with stays tense for a long time, it presses down on the upper part of the stomach right below it and limits its movement. When that same tension carries into the neck and shoulders, it shows up as pain around the head.

In medical terms, this breathing muscle is called the diaphragm.

We describe it as the body being stuck in the "on" position — like an engine that can't be switched off. When the body keeps working even when it should rest, digestion is the first thing pushed aside.

So rather than asking "What did you eat that disagreed with you?", we first look for "Why can't your body rest?"

What do we look at?

We press on your abdomen to see how hard the upper abdomen just below the breastbone is and how far our hand can go in. We also check your pulse and tongue.

To get the diaphragm working, we need to press into the abdomen to some degree, but in people whose upper abdomen is stiff, the hand doesn't go in deeply. That in itself is a finding.

We also ask about your sleep hours and how you spend your days. If sleep is shallow, the body stays "on" through the night as well.

How do we treat it?

We loosen the stiff neck and the area under the ribs by hand so you can breathe deeply, and use a prescription that supports circulation to the stomach.

We use Chuna and acupuncture to lower tension around the neck and upper abdomen. With herbal medicine, we work both on reviving the stomach's movement and on calming tension that has risen too high.

We see resting well at night as part of the treatment too. The body does some of its sorting out during sleep, and if that time is short, whatever you do during the day goes slowly.

How did people do?

Some people's heads feel lighter right after the hands-on treatment. Nausea and fatigue move more slowly.

We track progress by how deep the hand goes when pressing on the abdomen. When a belly that was hard like a rubber mat starts to give softly, we take that as a sign we're on the right track.

It can stiffen up again during stressful periods. We tell you that in advance too.

What are the limits of this approach?

Headaches have many other causes. What we look at is one path that involves tension in the neck and diaphragm.

If you have a sudden, severe headache unlike any you've had, fever with a stiff neck, or weakness in your arms or legs or slurred speech, go to the emergency room or see a neurologist before coming to us.

The same goes for fatigue. Things that show up on blood tests — such as anemia, thyroid problems or blood sugar — need to be ruled out first.

If you have the same symptoms

1. Stomach discomfort and headaches sometimes meet in one place.
2. When the diaphragm you breathe with stiffens, the stomach's movement gets pressed down too.
3. We press on the abdomen to see how far the hand can go in.
4. After hands-on treatment, the head often feels lighter first; the stomach and fatigue move slowly.
5. A sudden severe headache or weakness in the arms or legs means the emergency room or a neurologist first.

We don't look only at your stomach. Sometimes it only gets better when we also look at sleep, the neck and posture.

If you've taken medication for a long time and nothing has changed, come and see us. We don't look only at your stomach. Sometimes it only gets better when we also look at sleep, the neck and posture.

Because there are many possible causes, progress differs from person to person, even with the same care.