Muscling in on a headache cure
by Rodney Magazinovic
A new product developed to alleviate neck-related headaches is
set to bring relief to sufferers of headaches and migraines the world over,
thanks to a UniSA physiotherapy graduate.
Since graduating from UniSA with a Masters degree in 1991, musculoskeletal physiotherapist Dean Watson has spent the majority of his career investigating the role exercise and the strengthening of appropriate neck muscles can play in reducing headaches.
“Half of all headaches are cervicogenic or neck-related,” Watson said.
“My masters research was the first study to show that headaches can be caused by insufficient endurance and weakness in specific neck muscles and is often a result of poor neck posture.”
Huge response to media coverage of his research at the time led Dr Watson to set up his Adelaide consulting practise, The Headache Clinic. Since opening the clinic, Dr Watson has seen more than 4000 patients, allowing him to continue his research into headaches.
From that experience he is more convinced than ever that by encouraging the use of a specific group of neck muscles there is a decrease in the frequency and severity of headaches.
Now he is well on the way to developing a diagnostic tool to quantify neck muscle weakness and help patients to strengthen those muscles.
The diagnostic tool, EnduroflexTM, is a neck brace that consists of pressurised inflatable chambers that fit around both the front and back of the neck. The brace helps physiotherapists and other health care professionals measure neck muscle strength and easily detect weaknesses.
“The movement to strengthen the muscles that can reduce headaches is quite specific,” Dr Watson said.
“If the action is not performed correctly, the surrounding muscles can compensate for it and in fact encourage the ‘forward head’ or ‘poking chin’ posture which is typical in headache sufferers. This new tool can isolate the muscle groups that need to be strengthened.
“In the past, methods for measuring neck muscle strength were both inconvenient and less accurate because we could only measure when the patient was lying down and the muscles were aligned. What we really needed was to measure people in active positions – sitting or standing – to get a truer measure of the muscles in action. That’s been the challenge and it has taken years of development to get to this stage.
“The benefits of EnduroflexTM are twofold. Not only can it measure the relative strength of a patient’s neck muscles but it can also help the patient strengthen these weakened muscles through correct head on neck flexion.”
The product has been developed with assistance from ITEK, UniSA’s commercialisation arm, which has provided financial support and help with product design, marketing, trialling and patenting.
Watson says the product will be affordable and a valuable tool for physiotherapists and other qualified health professionals.
“Right now physiotherapists are not giving adequate attention to these muscles when perhaps they should be and a lot of this has to do with the fact that they can’t easily evaluate these muscles with existing equipment,” he said.
EnduroflexTM is in its final stage of development with the expectation it will be first tested by local physiotherapists for feedback before being launched into the international market during the next 12 months.