14 Causes Of Headaches - Knowing The Cause Can Reveal The Cure To Annoying Head Pain

Do you suffer from frequent headaches? Painful headaches are bound to ruin your day. It's hard to concentrate, make decisions or even relax. In my experience headaches come from a number of different sources:

1. Acute neck pain, caused by physical work, sport, and accidents. These can be obvious or as simple as stepping on an uneven pavement and jarring your back. Old injuries such as whiplash, can cause recurrent headaches.

Whiplash particularly affects the muscles from the front and side of the neck which attach along the collar bone.

Contact sports injuries tend to involve lateral force which damages the muscle attachment points on the base of the skull.

2. Classical migraine. Your health professional will diagnose this problem, however it may be triggered or made worse by a variety of causes. Many clients report a pattern of of events prior to the onset of a migraine.

If you can identify your pattern, such as increased business, increased stress, or anticipated stress, or eating foods you know or suspect to contribute to your migraines, then you can possibly head off the migrain by breaking the pattern.

3. Poor posture. Working a lot at a desk, being very tall or just a life time habit can cause rounded shoulders and your head to angle forward. This throwing a lot of stress onto the junction between the cervical and thoracic vertebrae.

4. Sinus pain, from chronically congested sinus cavities.

5. Digestive and liver problems.

6. Excessive glare, causing you to squint, tensing the muscles around the eyes.

7. Food allergies which tie in with a poorly functioning digestion and sinus problems.

8. Dehydration. Usually caused by too much alcohol or caffeine drinks. Winter can be a bad time as most people drink less water and prefer tea or coffee which are diuretics.

9. Unsuitable pillows or mattress.

10. Falling asleep in lounge chairs or aircraft with your head at an awkward angle.

11. Stress. Upsets, anger, anxiety all cause muscular tension. Most people hold stress in the jaw and the shoulder muscles, which in turn tightens the neck muscles and the fine sheath of muscle which extend over the skull.

12. Magnesium deficiency. This important mineral has many roles your body, but one of the most important is that it works closely with calcium. Magnesium causes your muscles to relax and calcium causes the muscles to contract. You never run out of calcium, because your bones will give it up to maintain the correct levels in your cells. But ... we simply do not get enough magnesium. Therefore your muscles don't relax enough and you experience muscular pain and headaches as a result.

13. Colds & 'flu will cause headache due to the inflammatory process.

14. Serious pathology such as head injury or possible tumors or aneurysms must always be medically investigated.