5 Common Causes of Headaches (And What You Can Do About Them)

June is the national awareness month for migraines and headaches, so I wanted to go over the top five reasons why we get headaches, because most of them are self-induced. Now, I have some amazing actresses here to help me demonstrate. So if you are under a lot of stress and muscle tension, you might have your shoulders up, you might be clenching your jaw, your body is stiff. If I ask you to relax, some of you say, "I don't know how to do that." That's a problem, because that's going to cause headaches. Next is dehydration. A lot of you, first of all, don't like water, or you might be drinking water but not enough, or you're drinking water and you literally are not absorbing it. How do you know? There's a quick test that we can do here to see: are you hydrated or not? Because drinking more water may not be the solution to the problem, especially if you're not able to absorb it. So that's something that we can check here. Don't assume. Let's test and not guess, because that is a very common cause of headaches, and that leads to an ammonia buildup in the brain, and your brain doesn't like that. Now, another is poor posture. In this day and age, with social media, Alyssa is going to demonstrate our slumpy kid, teenage, sometimes adult posture, with our head forward, our shoulders slumped, technology down here, or if your kids are doing schoolwork, they're slumped over. When you're born, your back is in the shape of a C. You don't want to go back to that. We're supposed to have three different curves. So we want those shoulders back, chin up, and we want to work on that posture, or "tech neck," as it's now called. Another is just lack of sleep. Now, some of you are just staying up too late. You're night owls, but you still have to get up in the morning. Some of you are waking up early to exercise because you think it's healthy, but you're cutting off your sleep. Some of you can't fall asleep, stay asleep, or wake up feeling restored. We need seven and a half to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, because that's when the brain detoxifies. That's when weight loss occurs. There are a lot of things that only happen when we're sleeping. So lack of sleep can also be a cause of headaches. Another is eye strain. Rachel has volunteered her brain, body, and eyeballs for this, so yay, Rachel. There's a simple way that we can muscle test for this. Right now she does not have any glasses on, and I can do a simple muscle test. Push up. She's got good resistance. That means her brain is saying, "I can hold this rock solid." Now, these are my glasses, not hers. These are not meant for her eyes. She will not be able to resist the strength of my pushing, and I'm going to use two fingers. All I'm doing is really not too much pressure, and she can't resist that strength to save her life. Take those off, because her brain's like, "I can't see. This isn't right." For some of you, it could be that your frames are just slightly bent, or the prescription needs to be updated. That has a profound effect on the brain, and that in and of itself can cause eye strain, which causes headaches. So if any of these things are things that you, your family, or your kids are suffering with, some of these you're going to have to correct on your own, and some of these you might need help with. But because it's national awareness month, let's be aware and let's fix it. See you soon.