A migraine is more than a bad headache — it's a neurological condition that causes moderate-to-severe throbbing pain, often on one side of the head, frequently with nausea and sensitivity to light and sound. Attacks can last from hours to days. If you’ve been searching for a headache doctor, Mountain View Pain Center’s headache specialists offer multidisciplinary care for migraine and other recurring headaches, combining interventional Pain Management with Physical Therapy, Chiropractic care, and Acupuncture — particularly valuable when neck dysfunction contributes to headache patterns.
Migraine (with and without aura); tension-type headache, the most common headache, felt as band-like pressure; cervicogenic headache, which originates from the neck and is often confused with migraine; occipital neuralgia, sharp or electric pain from irritated occipital nerves at the base of the skull; and post-traumatic headaches following whiplash or concussion. Jaw clenching and TMJ dysfunction can also refer pain to the temples and head.
For dizziness, vertigo or unsteadiness, see vestibular therapy.
Throbbing or pulsing pain, often one-sided; nausea or vomiting; sensitivity to light, sound, or smells; visual aura (flashing lights, zigzag lines) before some attacks; worsening with routine activity; and a post-attack "hangover" of fatigue and fogginess.
Diagnosis is clinical: we take a detailed headache history — frequency, character, triggers, medication response — and examine the neck and upper spine, because cervical joints and muscles commonly drive or amplify headaches. We screen for warning signs that need urgent medical workup, and coordinate with your physician or neurologist when advanced care or preventive prescriptions are appropriate.
If your headaches start at the base of the skull and shoot upward — sharp, electric, one-sided — the cause may be occipital neuralgia, which responds well to targeted occipital nerve blocks.
Request Your Appointment — clinics across Colorado and Arizona, or call (720) 749-5599.
Most of the headaches we see fall into three groups, and they are worth separating because they respond to different things. Tension-type headache is the common one: a band of pressure around the head or across the forehead, both sides, dull rather than throbbing, and it does not usually stop you functioning even when it will not go away.
Migraine is a different animal. It is typically one-sided, throbbing or pulsing, made worse by routine movement, and it comes with company — nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, and in some people a visual aura of shimmering or zig-zag lines beforehand. A migraine attack is a neurological event, not a bad headache, and people who have them can usually tell the difference themselves.
The third group is cervicogenic: a headache that is generated in the neck and referred to the head. It tends to start at the base of the skull and spread forward over one side, it is provoked by neck position or by sustained desk posture, and it comes with a stiff, restricted neck. This is the group most often mislabeled as migraine, and it is the group where treating the neck changes the headache.
The top three segments of the neck share a nerve pathway with the structures that cover the head and face. The practical consequence is that irritation up there does not stay local — it gets felt behind the eye, over the temple, or across the back of the head, and the person experiencing it has no reason to think their neck has anything to do with it.
That referral is why we examine the neck on every headache patient, including people who have carried a migraine diagnosis for years. Two things can be true at once: someone can have genuine migraine and also have a neck that is generating a second, separate headache pattern on top of it. When that is the case, treating the neck does not cure the migraine, but it can take away a real share of the total.
Headaches that began after a car accident behave this way often enough to deserve their own page — see headache after a car accident and whiplash treatment.
When we ask what a headache feels like, we are not making conversation. A throbbing quality that worsens when you bend over points one way; a steady band that is the same whatever you do points another. One-sided and always the same side is a different picture from one-sided and alternating.
Timing carries as much information as location. A headache that is present when you wake and eases through the morning, one that arrives every afternoon at the same point in a desk day, one that lands reliably at the weekend, and one that tracks a menstrual cycle are four different stories. So is a headache that is reliably relieved by lying in a dark room versus one that is unchanged by anything.
This is why a headache diary for two or three weeks is worth more than almost any test. Note when it starts, where it sits, what it feels like, what you had taken and eaten, how you slept, and what you did about it.
There is a trap that catches a lot of people with frequent headaches, and it is worth knowing about before you are in it. Regular use of over-the-counter or prescription pain relief for headache, on more days than not, can itself start producing headaches — a medication-overuse pattern in which the treatment and the problem become difficult to tell apart.
The signal is a headache that has quietly changed character: less like distinct attacks with clear gaps, more like a low background ache that is present most days with worse episodes on top. People in this pattern often say the tablets do not work as well as they used to, which is accurate.
Getting out of it is not a matter of willpower and should not be improvised. It needs a plan made with a clinician, because how it is unwound depends on what is being taken. If any of that sounds familiar, say so at the first visit — it changes the order in which everything else is done.
The overwhelming majority of headaches are not dangerous. A short list is, and the pattern is what separates them rather than the severity. A headache that reaches maximum intensity within about a minute — a thunderclap — needs emergency assessment immediately, as does the worst headache of your life if it is unlike anything you have had before.
Go to emergency care for a headache with fever and a stiff neck, with a rash, with confusion or slurred speech, with weakness or numbness on one side, with loss of vision, or after a head injury. Seek prompt evaluation for a genuinely new headache pattern beginning after the age of fifty, a headache that is consistently worse when lying flat or that wakes you from sleep, one that builds steadily over weeks rather than coming in episodes, and a new headache in anyone with a history of cancer or a suppressed immune system.
None of this describes ordinary tension-type headache or migraine. It is here so you can rule it out quickly and stop worrying.
No referral is needed, and our goal is to get you in within the same week.
Expect most of the visit to be conversation, because headache is diagnosed on history more than on anything a scan shows. We will want the pattern — onset, location, quality, duration, what comes with it, what you have tried — and then an examination of the neck, the jaw, the shoulder girdle and the nerves of the head and face. Imaging is used when something in that history or examination calls for it, not routinely; a scan is normal in most headache patients and does not by itself settle anything.
If a treatable neck component is found, Chiropractic and Physical Therapy address it directly, and Acupuncture for migraines is available at every clinic in Colorado and Arizona. Where an interventional step is appropriate it is performed in office at Northglenn, north Colorado Springs, Mesa and Glendale. Spine injections are also performed at Lowry on specific days. Bring a photo ID, your insurance card, a list of everything you take including anything you buy without a prescription, and your headache diary if you have started one.
Every Mountain View Pain Center clinic has Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic care and Acupuncture in the same building — so if a headache needs more than one kind of care, you do not get handed off to another practice.
Colorado: Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Lakewood, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Lone Tree, Northglenn, Lafayette, Greeley, Fort Collins.
Arizona: Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Peoria.
No referral is needed in either state. Find your nearest clinic on the full clinic map, or call Colorado (720) 749-5599 or Arizona (602) 325-2024.
Last updated: July 23, 2026.
Recurrent headaches that are moderate to severe, throbbing, worse with activity, and accompanied by nausea or light sensitivity are likely migraine. A provider can confirm the diagnosis and rule out other causes.
Yes. Cervicogenic headaches start in the joints and muscles of the upper neck and refer pain to the head, and neck dysfunction can also trigger migraine attacks. Treating the neck often reduces headache frequency.
Seek immediate care for a sudden "worst headache of your life," headache with fever and stiff neck, new neurological symptoms, or headache after significant head trauma.
Non-drug approaches — trigger management, sleep and hydration routines, Physical Therapy, Acupuncture, and interventional procedures for selected patients — can reduce attack frequency and severity, often alongside medication rather than instead of it.
Most patients can schedule directly without a referral. Some insurance plans require one for coverage — we verify your benefits before your first visit, so call (720) 749-5599 and we'll handle the details.
Headaches from the neck usually sit at the base of the skull or behind one eye, are worse on one side, and build the longer the head is held in one position. The examination tests the upper neck directly to establish it.
Medication management is part of what the Pain Management physicians do where it is appropriate, alongside the hands-on care. The plan is written from the examination rather than handed over on arrival.
Chiropractic care and Physical Therapy aimed at the upper neck, with Acupuncture available. Where that does not settle it, the physicians assess whether a nerve block aimed at the occipital nerves is worth doing.
Headaches and migraines are treated at every Mountain View Pain Center clinic in Colorado and Arizona — see the full clinic map, Colorado or Arizona.
