What are the causes of headaches?
Headaches are a widespread and unpleasant complaint in our society. Besides many different manifestations, there are just as many possible causes. A common – or according to literature the most common form, which occurs especially in the typical office worker, is the so-called tension headache.
The symptoms are not permanent, but occur occasionally or in phases for a few hours, whereby they manifest themselves – as the name suggests – in an unpleasant tensioning/pulling or a dull feeling of pressure. The headache is usually not localized at specific points, but spreads diffusely over the head. In contrast to migraine, tension headache is usually much less intense and other symptoms such as nausea and vomiting do not occur.
Tension headache is often caused by a combination of these two factors: The neck musculature has its origin at the skull bone and moves down to different vertebral bodies. Overstraining causes a so-called hypertonus, i.e. too much tension in the muscle, which results in an increased pull on the skull, causing the unpleasant symptoms. The neck musculature continues to belong to the back musculature, the rear muscle chain.
In order to lower the tone of the neck muscles, exercises in which the cervical spine is made long are recommended. Such exercises can be found in the articles:
- Stress and a
- Painful overloading of the neck muscles
The attitude is thus a crucial point for the complaint picture headache. The typical office posture, long static sitting in front of a screen, manifests itself in a sunken upper body, tilted head and raised shoulders.
The rear muscle chain must therefore constantly hold the heavy head, is hardly moved at all and thus after some time leads to the described tension and the unpleasant feeling of tension and pressure in the head. The front of the head is also affected. If the back has to constantly hold the extension, the front, i.e. the front neck muscles and the chest muscles, is shortened by the inclined head and the shoulder hanging forward.
Suitable stretching exercises help against the shortened musculature. Similarly, holding muscles that are only too weak can lead to the complaints and thus cannot withstand the stresses and strains of everyday life in the long term.A bad posture caused by unbalanced muscle traits leads in the long run to bony malpositions, the intervertebral discs are unevenly loaded, for example, a herniated disc and also nervous bottlenecks (spinal stenosis) can occur, which cause problems in their supply areas. Topics that might also be of interest to you:
- Headaches caused by the cervical spine
- Exercises against neck pain
- Physiotherapy for a cervical spine syndrome
- Exercises against shoulder and neck pain
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