Mental Balance

Most headache sufferers have probably gone through a time of significant stress in their lives and realized that they also began to experience more frequent headaches in that time.

So why does that happen?

There are 2 systems in our body that are extremely important to our survival and our health. The sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. The reason they are important is because the sympathetic system effects the body by activating what we call the fight or flight response which your body uses to protect itself from danger. The parasympathetic system is used by your body to relax, heal, digest and prepare your body for reproduction.

The sympathetic system activates larger muscle groups in your body, increases your heart rate, turns off reproductive, healing and digestive functions to prepare your body for impending danger. This is a very useful in a situation where you need to fight or flee. The problem lies when people are consistently activating this system throughout the day. Humans are unique because we can activate this system with our thoughts. If we are stressed at work, thinking about bills we haven’t payed at the end of the month, thinking about a fight we had with our spouse or stressed for any reason we can activate this system without being in a dangerous situation.

This constantly high heart rate, muscle tightness, clenching of the teeth and de-activation of the parasympathetic system increases the likelihood you will experience a headaches because it over-loads your body. If you have any structural weakness, inability to drain blood from the brain, chemical imbalances along with your stress it can augment the intensity of your headaches and create an even bigger problem.

So how can you manage this and turn on the parasympathetic system?

Breathing and meditative practices are one of the easiest ways to naturally induce the parasympathetic system. Rule of 7’s breathing (focus on your breath, try to breath through your belly. Breath out for seven seconds, hold then breath in for seven seconds and do this seven times) when you are experiencing a stressful time this practice will help engage the parasympathetic nervous system and reduce the impact stress will have on your headaches. Also, doing daily meditation for a few minutes a day where you quiet your brain and attempt to think about nothing is also a great tool to engaging the parasympathetic response.

There are also many other tools which will be discussed in further blogs but give it a try. most people when they read this think that something so simple could not be helpful but it truly is.