Top Tips for Headaches

It’s the end of the beginning of the week! Hooray! Hopefully you’ve gotten to enjoy a wonderful weekend and your work week is off to a fun start.

I want to hit a hot topic in many of our lives – headaches. Those nasty buggers that can pop up for no reason, the ones that linger for days, or the ones that just started happening to you later in life. Whatever the circumstances of the headache or the accompanying symptoms – they’re no fun! I’ve come up with my top tips for preventing and managing headaches.

Self-Massage
This is my top go-to for obvious reasons. I am so thankful to have had schooling in kinesiology. Why? Because I know what nasty trigger points can cause. More importantly, I know how to stop them. Many major headache trigger points lie in muscles including: SCM, scalenes, and the traps. There are easy ways to work these muscles on your own to help with or to keep headaches at bay. There are videos available as well as literature, but I always encourage asking a professional for a demo.

Sleep
It’s overrated, right? Wrong! Sleep is severely lacking in the US. We all know that. Yet we all continue with poor sleep habits: staying up late, playing on electronics too late, eating too late, not eating the right foods, etc. If we can get our sleep habits tightened up, we would be doing our bodies a huge favor.

Hydration
Everyone is always talking about this! There’s a reason – staying hydrated can often times prevent many headaches from even beginning. Not only does it ward of headaches, it’s good for your whole body! When you’re staying hydrated, you’re keeping good stuff flowing in and flushing the bad stuff out.

Relaxation
Making sure your stress is low and you take time for you can play a key role. Meditation of the masses has been on the rise the last few years – and with good reason. There’s more and more research coming out about just how helpful meditation can be. Even if you’re not into that or don’t feel you have the time, just taking a few minutes out of your day for a breathing exercise can work wonders for the mind and body.

Headaches are unique to each individual. They can be daily or extremely random, intense or just annoying. Everyone has his or her own individual experience with these painful events. I encourage you to try improving or adding some of the above tips.

Go forth and have no headaches!

B.