The head moves backward and then forward suddenly with excessive force. Whiplash is most common following a rear-end car accident, but it can also result from amusement park rides, abuse, falls, or sports injuries. The pain and stiffness in the neck associated with whiplash as well as a headache near the base of the skull can make it feel like your head is heavier than normal.
Check out more about whiplash and some at-home treatments. A head injury is any injury to the head, brain, or scalp. One type of head injury called a concussion occurs when your brain bounces against the walls of your skull.
Other signs of a concussion may include:. Concussion symptoms can persist for weeks or even months post-injury. You may experience symptoms such as headaches, vertigo, fatigue, drowsiness, and blurred vision, which can also lead to a heavier than normal feeling in the head. Find out what concussion signs to look for in children. In general, fatigue is a feeling of excessive tiredness.
You might feel fatigued due to lack of sleep or even because of a hangover, but there are also several medical conditions that can make you feel tired all the time. In general, excessive tiredness can make it harder to hold up your head all day. You might feel a constant need to lie down or rest. If you feel constant exhaustion along with a heavy feeling in the head, it could be a sign of an underlying health issue. Anxiety is the feeling of fear, nervousness, or worry before, during, or after a stressful event.
An attack of anxiety can also lead to pressure and heaviness in the head along with a racing heart, sweating, and trouble concentrating. For most people, feelings of anxiety come and go.
For others, anxiety can continue and worsen over time. If anxiety interferes with your daily life, you may have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety can cause a heavy head feeling because of a type headache known as a tension headache that is common in people with anxiety disorders. Learn more about anxiety and how to cope. Migraines are different from headaches. Migraines are more intense, even debilitating, and come with many symptoms in addition to head pain, such as:. A heavy head feeling can result from the stiff neck, fatigue, and head pain associated with migraines.
A heavy head feeling can be a result of a vestibular disorder. The vestibular system includes the parts of the inner ear and brain that control balance and eye movements. Seasonal allergies , also known as hay fever or allergic rhinitis, can make your head feel heavy because the symptoms often result in pressure and congestion in the head. Headaches, sinus and ear congestion, and a general sense of poor health can make it feel like your head is heavier than usual.
The research that supports this concept was developed by Jim Elliott, PhD. Basically, the upper neck muscles help to stabilize the head on the neck. When the upper neck is injured often the facet joints and ligaments get damaged , the muscles shut down and begin to atrophy 1, 2, 3. This instability of the head on the neck causes the spinal discs, joints, nerves, and muscles to get beat up over time-leading to headaches.
The injury of the upper neck joints and ligaments that began the atrophy can also cause headaches. When I see a traumatic neck injury patient with headaches, I ask the patient to lift their hands above their head. I then hold their head still with my hands, acting like their upper neck stabilizer muscles. The stabilization of the head gives the upper trapezius a solid base of support to pull from as the arms are lifted. Without that support in a patient with atrophied and weak upper neck muscles, the upper trapezius works harder to both stabilize the head and lift the arms.
An MRI can visualize the alar, transverse, and accessory ligaments. If the doctor wants to see the accessory ligaments, they are harder to visualize so a 3T magnet will help MRI machines come in various field strengths which tie back to the quality of the picture and the best you can get right now is a 3T 4, 5. This means that the doctor will place you in a seated position and ask you to move your neck around while a video x-ray is taken and recorded.
Your doctor may use this to see if the neck bones move too much. This can indicate that the ligaments holding the neck bones together may be damaged. First, you have to get rid of the pain in the damaged joints-we use biologic injections like platelets and stem cells to help the joints. Sometimes the ligaments have to be injected as well to help strengthen the neck and relief some pain.
A slow and gentle strengthening program is a good place to start we start the patient using an adapted iPad game where their head movements have to guide a ball through a maze. We like the BTE Multi-cervical unit for this part. There is a new procedure that can directly inject the ligaments that hold the head on. During a PICL procedure, bone marrow concentrate that contains a stem cell fraction is injected into the CCJ cranio-cervical junction ligaments.
In order to reach these ligaments, the procedure is performed through the back of the throat. There are also people who get heaviness in the head.
Vertigo is another possible cause of heaviness in the head. Vertigo is a sense of dizziness or loss of balance, especially when an individual moves the position of their head or goes from a lying to sitting position. While many people experience fatigue , some people feel constant exhaustion and along with it a heavy feeling in the head. This could be a sign of an underlying health issue, such as kidney problems, liver issues, heart disease, diabetes , cancer, anemia , or chronic fatigue syndrome.
If you have recurring heaviness in the head and tiredness , you should seek medical attention. Lastly, if you experience whiplash, then you may experience a heavy head. Whiplash is when the muscles and ligaments of your neck reach beyond a point of normal range of motion. The most common cause of whiplash is experiencing a car accident.
It may also cause due to amusement park rides, abuse, falls, or sports injuries. The signs and symptoms of heaviness in the head largely depend on what is causing the problem. For instance, in the case of a migraine , it is common to have pain on just one side of the head, along with sensitivity to light and sound.
In the case of fatigue causing your heavy head, you will notice that you feel exhausted. In many situations, it becomes a vicious cycle because you are exhausted and start to worry about being tired all the time, thus adding anxiety to the mix.
Oftentimes, anxiety leads to insomnia. When anxiety is the underlying cause of heaviness in the head and tiredness, you can experience irritability, shaking, sweating, restlessness, heart palpitations, dizziness, and diarrhea. Researchers at Queensland University in Australia report that one in 13 people worldwide suffers from anxiety. A lot of people will not require treatment for heaviness in the head simply because they experience a mild episode once, it goes away, and that is it.
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