Headaches That Start in Your Neck

There is a kind of headache that does not behave like a headache. It builds through the afternoon rather than arriving. It sits at the back of the head, or behind one eye, and if you press the base of your skull you find something that is tender rather than simply sore. It often eases when you lie down and comes back when you sit at a desk.

People treat this with painkillers, more coffee, or more water, and are puzzled when none of it does much. That is because the problem is usually not in your head.

Where it comes from

The muscles at the base of the skull — the ones that hold your head up when it is tilted forward — attach along the bottom of the skull itself. When they are held short and loaded for hours, the referred pain travels up over the back of the head and sometimes round to behind the eye. The mechanism is well described and the pattern is recognisable once you know it.

What loads them is the same thing that produces every other complaint in this category: a head held forward of the spine. A laptop screen below eye level for eight hours is the most common cause in this city, and it is why the pattern is so common in condominium home offices — see laptop posture in a small Bangkok condo.

How to tell it apart from other headaches

Not a diagnosis, but a useful filter:

• Neck-related: builds gradually, worse late in the day, tender at the base of the skull, eases when you lie down, often one-sided and always the same side.
• Dehydration or caffeine: responds to water or coffee within an hour, no neck tenderness.
• Eye strain: centred around the eyes and forehead, worse with screen brightness, better with a break from the screen.

If a headache is sudden and severe, comes with visual changes, fever, or weakness or numbness anywhere, that is not a matter for a massage therapist and not something to work through. See a doctor.

What actually reduces them

Get the screen up. The top of the screen at roughly eye height means your head sits above your spine rather than in front of it. This removes the load rather than treating it, and over a few weeks it is the change that reduces the frequency.

Interrupt the position. Every half hour, look up and move your shoulders through their full range. A minute is enough. The point is the interruption.

Check your pillow. A pillow that holds your neck at an angle for eight hours will produce exactly this, and people spend months blaming their desk for it. Waking up stiff covers how to tell.

Where massage helps, and how much

Considerably, for this particular complaint — more than for most. The tissue involved is superficial and accessible, and releasing it often reduces a headache within the session rather than over days.

Head, neck and shoulder massage is the treatment written for it: seated work through the shoulders, neck and scalp, through clothing, no oil. Forty-five minutes is ฿900 and sixty is ฿1,200. It suits tension headaches that start at the base of the skull, which is precisely the pattern described above.

If the headaches come with the whole desk-work picture — tight forearms, rounded shoulders, a stiff upper back — then office syndrome massage covers more ground for the same money at ฿900 for forty-five minutes.

Do tell us before booking about any diagnosed neck or cervical-spine condition, recent whiplash, dizziness on turning your head, or numbness in the hands. These change what should be done, and scalp and neck work is the area where that matters most.

How often

If the screen is now at eye height, most people find the headaches become infrequent enough that a session every three or four weeks is maintenance rather than repair. If nothing about the desk has changed, you are managing a symptom that is being recreated daily — which works, but is a subscription rather than a solution. Why one massage helps and the next does not goes into that properly.

Book a session at your address or desk, or start from the home page.