Muscles of the Head

There are muscles encasing our heads and faces. I think people actually understand the concept of referred pain (or non-local pain) when it comes to headaches - they just don’t know they do. Put another way, I don’t hear much about people massaging their head (cranial) muscles, rolling them, stretching them, or otherwise treating those various muscles.

Of course muscles in general can be the producers of symptoms, but it’s rare. I write about this extensively. Everyone loves to name and treat muscles, but, while important, they’re rarely the problem when it comes to orthopedic disorders.

People seem to intuitively comprehend that head pain or headaches can come about for a lot of reasons. Stress, dehydration, allergies, hunger, concussions, and illness to name a few. There are indeed musculoskeletal causes as well - just rarely the muscles. The joints in the neck and mid-back can refer pain (or any symptom) to the head. In rarer cases, the jaw joint can create local symptoms.
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If people can understand that their head can hurt not as a result of the muscles in the area and that their chests and arms can hurt due to a heart problem, then hopefully people can start to grasp that arm pain or leg pain is not necessarily due to arm or leg muscles. -- Laura