Book Review: CHIROPRACTIC APPROACH TO HEAD PAIN

A quick scan of the contents and layout of this book was enough to make me sit up and take notice of this book. Darryl Curl has certainly welded together the expertise of many authoritative chiropractors and other health practitioners to form a text that covers the A to Z of head pain encountered in chiropractic and osteopathic practice. Darryl Curl, whose background includes both chiropractic and dentistry, believes he has synthesised current head pain principles, head pain patient models, and musculoskeletal integrative treatment rationales and techniques into a generic model of head pain management. The chapter on spinal manipulation dramatically contrasts the wealth of indications for spinal adjustment with the very few research studies done covering the cervical spine and head pain. Nevertheless, this book drives home the message of the potential of cervical spine manipulation on head pain. As added interest, some multidiscipinary input is provided on: evolution of the human brain; psychological disorders; craniofacial orthopaedics (this is a new one to most of us); headache caused by medications. Though this book is very thorough, it is quite comfortable reading. The material succinctly revises concepts previously learnt and manages to excite the reader with new information and ideas. This is I believe, a book to interest most chiropractors and osteopaths in clinical practice.