Headaches are nasty and they are not pleasant. The pain from a headache can range from just slightly annoying to severely debilitating.
There are varying degrees of headaches and if you have had them all, then figuring out the common causes of headaches can help you lower the chances of having them in the future.
Because, who actually likes headaches anyway. I certainly don’t and you probably don’t either. And while there is no one size fits all approach to reducing headaches, I have figured out a number of effective ways to reduce the amount headaches that I was having.
Throughout 2020 I had a lot of headaches and it prompted me to find out what could be causing them. Based on what I found out, I am going to reveal to you the five common causes of headaches.
And I’m going to share with you how I drastically reduced the amount of headaches that I was having on a weekly basis.
The 5 common causes of headaches are:
- Stress
- Hunger
- Dehydration
- Lack of sleep
- Caffeine
Knowing this, here is an inside look into each one of these causes and what I have done to combat these culprits.
Stress
Having stress in your life can be a major contributor to the headaches that you’re having, it was for me. Stress, for me, caused more than just headaches. It altered my mood, caused me to worry all of the time and affected my overall health in a negative way.
So much so that I developed several ways to reduce stress in my life. By implementing 7 natural ways to reduce stress, I have noticed that they have been a contributing factor to me having less headaches.
There is no denying the fact that stress is one of the major causes of headaches. And I’m not a fan of taking prescribed medications. I do what I can to enhance my health as naturally as I can.
Hunger
You’ve probably noticed yourself that there is correlation to you getting “hangry” with having the occasional headache. Well, based on my experience, that’s because our body needs fuel.
Not only does it need fuel, but it needs good quality fuel known as healthy food. I noticed a big increase in my headaches when I wasn’t eating very healthy.
And while we inherently know this, it’s easy to fall into the trap of not paying close attention to the foods we eat. And I can also tell you that since I have made it a point to focus heavily on nutrition, my headaches have almost fully subsided.
Dehydration
As you may know, it’s really important to stay hydrated for a number of obvious reasons. But the one not so obvious reason is that if you are constantly having headaches, you may not be drinking enough water.
To address this, I drink between 4-6 liters of water a day.
I fill this green jug up 3 times everyday and drink anywhere from 2.5 – 3 of them a day. It’s become a habit now. And since I’ve been drinking more water I have noticed that my headaches have almost completely subsided.
Lack of Sleep
Your body needs rest. It needs to recharge in order to get through another day. And sleep plays an important role to your overall health.
If you are not getting an adequate amount of sleep, then you are most likely not having a restful sleep either. Quantity and quality are two different things.
Just because you get seven hours of sleep, for example, you still may wake up feeling tired or worse yet, with a headache. Your quality of sleep is very important.
I’m very convinced, to this day, that a major contributing factor to the headaches that I was having had to do with lack of sleep and to the poor quality of sleep that I was getting.
And now, I have conditioned myself to get 6-8 hours of sleep per night with the help of melatonin spray and CBD. And as a result, I don’t have nearly the amount of headaches that I used too. Whereas before, I was only getting 3 hours of sleep and had a headache almost everyday of the week.
Caffeine
If you rely on caffeinated beverages to give you a boost of energy, it might actually be causing you to have headaches.
A 2019 study by The American Journal of Medicine came to the conclusion that the intake of caffeinated beverages amongst a group of 101 people increased the chances of having a migraine in the same day.
This is because, according to Healthline, caffeine narrows the blood vessels in your brain. Without it, your blood vessels widen. This boost in blood flow may trigger a headache.
Before I looked into the correlation of caffeine and headaches, I drank a lot of caffeinated beverages. I have scaled back on my caffeine intake tremendously.
This is a big reason why all of the all-natural supplements that I take do not have caffeine in them.
Summary
These are the most common causes of headaches. You may have had a headache because of one or all of them. But rest assured that if you are having headaches as frequently as I used to, there is hope.
Make yourself a headache journal and keep track of how often and when you are having headaches. This will help you hone in on what the culprit might be.
And when you have a day without a headache whatsoever, keep track of that too. Before long, you will develop a preventive plan to lower your chances of having a headache.