Natural headache relief is needed now more than ever before in history.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 47% of the world population suffers with mild to severe headaches at least once per year. When discussing conditions of the central nervous system, headaches are at the top of the list.
What’s truly horrible is that doctors aren’t really taught about headaches in medical school! They get their few hours of “this is a headache” instruction and promptly move on, leaving headache disorders unchartered despite the number of patients who suffer from them.
As a result, headaches remain untreated and considered too minor to discuss. Only a tiny portion of people who get headaches ever talk to their doctor about them.
The overwhelming opinion of doctors and those who know a person who gets frequent, even debilitating headaches is pretty clear. “It’s just a headache. It’s not like it will kill you!”
While it’s true that most headaches aren’t life threatening, they certainly threaten your quality of life. To make things worse, more than 50% of sufferers don’t seek natural headache relief, they self-medicate with dangerous over-the-counter drugs.
Three Primary Types of Headache Disorders
- Migraine Headaches: This form of headache can appear in puberty and remain a problem for your entire life. Inflammation of nerve tissue deep inside your brain produces pain that many have described as moderate to unbearable. Chemical imbalances, hormonal fluctuations, food intolerances, stress, and inadequate sleep are some of the key factors that lead to migraines.
Most sufferers experience nausea and experience the majority of their pain on one side of the head. Accompanied by nausea and a steady throbbing, a migraine can last a couple of hours or as long as three days. Other symptoms may be heightened light, noise, and odor sensitivity. Attacks may happen infrequently, laying you low once a year or they can be a fixture in your life that appears weekly. Women are three times more likely to suffer from migraines than men.
- Tension Headaches: This is the headache reported by as much as 70% of populations around the world according to WHO. The primary cause is mental or emotional stress that makes the muscles in your neck, face, and jaw clench tight. Not getting enough sleep and missing meals (also usually related to stress) can lead to tension headaches.
They are marked by a gradual “tightening” sensation around the head. Steady pressure builds that causes pain, heightened sensitivity to light, and a need for quiet. Men and women tend to get this form of headache almost equally.
- Cluster Headaches: These are the least common types of headaches, known also as trigeminal autonomic cephalgias. They result in incredible pain on one side of the head and face, behind or around your eye. They don’t last long but can be severe. Facial drooping on the pain side, watery eyes, or sinus issues (runny nose or congestion) are signs of a cluster headache.
Some patients present with episodic cluster headaches while others may have the chronic form. Once the headache has begun, pain levels steadily increase over half an hour. Most stop in under three hours. If the case is episodic, headaches may appear frequently for several weeks before disappearing for several months. Those with the chronic disorder can experience daily bouts of severe pain for longer than a year with few days of remission. Men (especially those who smoke) are more often affected by cluster headaches.
New research from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center reported exorbitant costs related with unnecessary testing, referrals to specialists, and prescriptions for those who do talk about headaches (12 million annually in the United States alone) with their doctors.
While headaches are common, it is incredibly rare that trauma, genetic defect, or a serious disease such as cancer causes them.
BIDMC reviewed 144 million patient visits. Study lead John N. Mafi, MD talked about their findings, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Not surprisingly, they mirror my continuous advice about diet and lifestyle.
“I was particularly alarmed about the overall trend of more imaging tests, medications, and referrals alongside less counseling. These findings seem to reflect a larger trend in the US healthcare system beyond just headache: over-hurried doctors seem to be spending less time connecting with their patients and more time ordering tests and treatments. The current 20 minute visit-based model of healthcare is broken.”
In other words, the medical community is (still) going about it all wrong.
Mafi explains, “The management of headache represents an area of particular concern for our healthcare system and stands out as an important opportunity to improve the value of healthcare in the United States.”
They aren’t talking to their patients and saying, “You have to change the way you’re eating or living.” Instead, they test them for non-existent brain tumors, prescribe dangerous prescription drugs, or advise taking OTC medications like acetaminophen and ibuprofen – which have serious long-term side effects as well!
If you want lasting natural headache relief, you must make a radical change. As with most chronic pain, real change starts with lowering body inflammation that’s going to transform how you feel every day.
5 Steps for Natural Pain Relief You Can Do Right Now
- Exercise every day for 15-30 minutes (even if it’s low impact).
- Get more sleep (eight hours a night) and do not apologize for needing it.
- Cut out all refined sugar, flour, and grains. Lose the junk entirely!
- Increase your intake of healthy fats (such as fatty fish and coconut oil) immediately.
- Lower your daily stress and then lower it more with yoga and meditation.
Other “tricks” (that aren’t really tricks at all) are quitting smoking, having more positive influences in your daily life, and listening to your body. If you are a victim of chronic headaches, you must evaluate when you get them and try to pinpoint your triggers.
You don’t have to deal with pain. You can control how you feel. To find out more, read my book “Natural Pain Relief.”
Take back your life and take yourself off the statistic list.
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