That headache starting at the base of your skull
If you have been waking up with a dull ache that starts behind your ears and works its way to your temples, you are probably not thinking about your neck at all. You are thinking about your sinuses, or the weather, or whether you need new glasses. But a lot of headaches that show up this way start in the muscles and joints of the neck, not the head itself.
In Prairie Creek this time of year, it is worth paying attention to when the headaches show up. If they come on after you have spent an hour hunched over a laptop at the kitchen table, or after raking leaves in November, or after shoveling out a driveway during one of our occasional ice events, that pattern matters. It is a clue about where the actual problem is.
Why the neck and head are connected in the first place
The top three joints in your neck share nerve pathways with the base of your skull and the muscles that wrap around your temples and forehead. When those upper neck joints get stiff or the muscles around them stay tight, the nerves can refer pain upward. You feel it in your head, but the source is a few inches lower down.
This is different from a migraine or a sinus headache, though it can feel similar. The tell is usually that moving your neck, turning to check your blind spot, tilting your head back to look at a ceiling fan, makes the headache worse or brings it on. Sinus and migraine headaches usually do not care what your neck is doing.
More on this from physical therapy in Prairie Creek.
What the older housing stock around here does to your neck
A lot of homes in this part of Arkansas were built decades ago, before anyone was designing kitchens around laptops or home offices around video calls. That means a lot of us are working from a kitchen table, a recliner, or a spare bedroom desk that was never meant for long stretches of sitting. Add in ceiling heights and window placement from an older ranch or farmhouse layout, and people end up craning their necks toward a TV mounted too high, or twisting sideways to see a monitor because the outlet only exists on one wall.
Humidity plays a role too. Summers here get sticky, and a lot of houses without central air conditioning, or with older window units, end up with people sleeping in awkward positions to stay in the path of a fan or a cooler room. A few nights of that and the neck muscles on one side tighten up in a way that does not resolve on its own.
Also worth reading: local physical therapy in Prairie Creek.
What you can check yourself before assuming the worst
Start with how you sleep. If your pillow forces your neck into a sharp angle, either too high or too flat, that is worth fixing with something simple before you do anything else. Check your main workspace at home. If you are looking down at a laptop screen for hours, prop it up and get a separate keyboard, even a cheap one, so your neck is not held in a forward, downward position for most of the day.
Notice your yard work habits, especially in fall when a lot of us are raking and bagging leaves for weeks at a time, and in winter after an ice storm when downed limbs need clearing. Repetitive overhead reaching or a lot of looking down at the ground for long stretches will aggravate an already stiff neck. Take breaks and switch tasks rather than pushing through an entire afternoon in one position.
If you try adjusting your pillow, your desk setup, and your work pace, and the headaches ease up within a couple of weeks, that is a good sign the problem really was mechanical and minor.
There is more on that at find out more.
When this stops being something you can fix on your own
If the headaches keep coming despite those changes, or if you notice numbness or tingling running down an arm, that is past the point of a homeowner fix. A physical therapist can check how well the joints in your neck move, how strong and balanced the surrounding muscles are, and whether the pattern points to something that needs hands-on treatment and a specific set of exercises rather than just a better pillow.
This is also the point to see a doctor first if the headaches are severe, sudden, or come with vision changes, weakness, or a fever. Those are not neck-and-headache patterns and need a different kind of attention. But for the ordinary, nagging, comes-and-goes headache that seems to trace back to a stiff neck, physical therapy is often the more direct route than cycling through pain relievers and hoping it settles down on its own.