What causes headaches and what can stop them

You know the feeling - you slowly close your eyes as your dominant hand comes to rest on your forehead. You rub across your forehead and over your closed eyelids, trying to relieve the pressure. Or maybe your hand goes to the base of your skull and your fingers work to release tension at the occipitals. Or maybe you just took a big bite of ice cream and the pain is so quick you don't even have time to move your hands. You just tense your body and say "OUCH!"

You've got a headache. What do you do now?

If there were only one cause for headaches, relief might be more simple. There are actually dozens of reasons we have headaches, including the most temporary cause - eating something cold too fast. That sort of brain freeze headache passes in just a few seconds and relief is as simple as eating cold foods more slowly. However, chronic tension headaches, allergy headaches and migraines are not so simple to remedy.

How do we get headaches? Let us count the ways.......stress, food allergies, eyestrain, fever, caffeine, dehydration, sinus congestion, high blood pressure, alcohol, hunger, menstrual problems, hormonal imabalances, infected teeth, muscle tension, a head injury, temperomandibular join disfunction, colon toxicity and constipation, chemicals from cleaning products, automotive fumes, allergies to perfumes, and menopause.

Disclaimer: Before I start going into the more common types of headaches and sharing some holistic health information for headache relief, please note that whenever frequent and unexplained headaches occur, it is always wise to seek medical attention, to rule out any underlying physical problem.

Chronic, unexplained headaches can be symptoms of serious disorders including brain tumors, impending stroke or heart attack, or glaucoma. Also, if you are under a doctor's care for any known condition, you should always check with your chosen healthcare professional before adding anything new to your daily regimen. It is my hope that you have chosen a natural medicines practitioner or a doctor willing to work with one to find the right combination of natural and allopathic options for your optimal health.

The most common headache, the type of headache most of us have had, is a tension headache. Tension headaches are, simply enough, headaches that are caused by excess tension somewhere in the body. When our muscles hold tension in unnatural ways, we develop tension headaches. A prime example is one that I'm very familiar with myself. I call it "computer neck". If you work online, or in any job where you sit in front of a computer and type all day, you know what computer neck is and how a tension headache feels at the end of the day. Other causes of tension headaches include sleeping on a mattress or pillow that does not properly support spinal and neck alignment, injury that strains major muscle groups, particularly in the shoulder or neck area, bad eyeglass prescriptions, eyestrain from computer work, spinal misalignments and stress. Stressis a major cause of tension headaches because a stressed body is a tense body. In fact, it is physically impossible to be stressed out and completely relaxed at the same time. Watch yourself when in stressful stiuations and you can see how your body sets you up for a headache later - the shoulders pull up and knot, the neck becomes more rigid, the solar plexus tightens, and sometimes the jaw clenches as well. In addition, our breathing becomes more shallow, our adrenals exhibit fight or flight changes, and our whole body gets ready for some kind of battle that never occurs. Emotions play a large role in stress-related headaches.

Fear, worry, anger, and anxiety are excellent tension headache creators.

You may have already guessed at one of the of the holistic approaches to tension headaches. Since it is impossible for the stressed out body to be relaxed, it makes since that relaxing the body makes it harder for stress reactions to persist. Relaxation expercises, meditation, biofeedback and any other activity that helps your body relax will help with tension headaches over time.

Food allergies are an often over-looked cause of headaches. MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is one ingredient that can cause headaches. No wonder. It's an excitotoxin. That means it excites brain cells just before it kills some of them. No wonder our bodies stress when we ingest MSG. I personally feel it should have been banned by our FDA long ago, particularly since it is a favorite of those who manufacture food consumed by children.

Peanut allergies can be life threatening for some. Wheat and milk allergies are also common but often undiagnosed factors in cases of frequent headache, although wheat allergies and lactose intolerance more commonly disturb the digestive tract.

One note on food allergies: in the eyes of an enzyme therapist, a food allergy is simply a food your body does not have sufficient enzyme capacity to assimilate. I am a firm believer in enzyme therapy for helping the body correct food allergies naturally. If you would like to learn more about enzymes for healing, I offer a free autoresponder series called "The Enzyme Tour". CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE Just be sure to send the request from the same email address where you want to receive the free information, as it goes out automatically.

So what can we do about tension headaches? Well, the number one suggestion I have is STRESS REDUCTION, whatever it takes. The truth is that a lot of us, in today's fast paced world have become so accustomed to living in stress that we don't even realize when it has become damaging to our system. So, in order to reduce it, we first have to become more aware of it's effect. We do this simply by noticing our body.

Breathing is effected by stress so stop right now and see how you are breathing. If your breath is short and shallow or kind of "catches?at any point in the in/out cycle, you are stressed. Your breathing should be slow, rhythmic and deep. If you are continually breathing in a shallow way, you are not getting enough oxygen to your body and this can cause a headache, along with all kinds of little problems that, over time, can become big problems for you sytem.

Another way to begin to notice the effects of stress is to pay more attention to your physical body when you are in a "more than normal? stress situation. Some things you may notice: a tightening of the muscles in the solar plexus area, a constriction to the throat, changes in your heartbeat or an increase in pulse, muscle pain or spasm, and even momentary blurred vision or dizziness. When we are so focused on what is causing the stress, we can will ourselves not to notice what it is doing to our bodies. However, the good news is that we can also will ourselves to begin to notice.

After you tune in and see that something is stressing your body, then you need to learn to take immediate steps to counteract the stress. How? Deepen your breathing. Focus on constricted areas of tight muscles and mentally send a message for them to relax and let go. Step away from the immediate stressful situation, if at all possible, even for just five minutes, to get yourself calmed and centered.

Helpful stress reduction exercises:

1. Embrace natural environments. Take a walk. Hug a tree. Put your bare feet on the ground or, better still, in running water. Nature has a way of calming us, bringing our rhythm closer to the rhythm of the Earth.

2. Pray. No matter what your spiritual path, if you have a belief in Universal Life Force energy, you can find help in letting go of excess stress through pray to the God of your knowing. Enlist spiritual help.

3. Drink more water and more often. Water is vital to the normal function of our system, including our ability to handle stress. So drink more during stressful times.

4. Take a good colloidial mineral I find that colloidial minerals are amazing during stressful times, to help my body come back to balance.

5. Infuse essential oils or just keep a favorite with you to sniff. Pure, therapeutic essential oils (and it does matter a lot that they are pure and distilled at low heat, slowly!) when breathed in through the nasal passages, can affect our emotional state within 3 seconds! Nothing works faster. I like lavendar for relaxation and peppermint for those times when I need to be more alert.

Massage , foot reflexology and Reiki are also just absolutely wonderful for a body under stress. Many of us consider getting a massage to be some kind of luxury but I've come to the conclusion that most of us need regular body work to remain at a level of energetic health. Some of you may not even know what foot reflexology is or what it does, but I think you will be amazed if you ever have a session. I find a good reflexology treatment almost as relaxing as a full body massage but it takes less time and usually costs less too so it may be an alternative when finances are tight or time is short. I encourage you to make your health enough of a priority to get regular help from a good body-worker. Reiki is a form of energy healing work that is also profoundly relaxing and I find that my mind is far better equipped to deal with a traumatic or mentally stressful time when I have a Reiki session. Most everyone is familiar with the benefits of massage , I believe, but if you are unfam! iliar with Reiki and foot reflexology , there is information here on both modalities Here

No article of this type can completely cover even one kind of headache but I hope this has given you at least a few avenues of exploration in dealing with yours.