Everyone gets headaches, so why should you bother fixing yours?

Everyone gets headaches, so why should I do anything about mine?

First of all, headaches aren’t normal. Secondly, why do you think you deserve to live in pain?

The best description of a migraine I’ve ever had from a client came from a 13 year old girl. She’d been experiencing headaches for a few months, and had exhausted the NHS route. Blood tests, MRI scans, eye tests, and months later, she was still no closer to understanding why she was getting migraines, nor how to treat them.

Then she came to see me.

She described her headaches as ‘it starts as a dot in the middle, I start to see it at the edge of my vision, and ends as a crescent moon around the eye’, often accompanied with nausea and inability to focus on letters or read.

A full consultation revealed that her autonomic nervous system was not properly regulated. Your autonomic nervous system is very important because it  is responsible for all the bodily functions you don't consciously control. This includes your heart rate, breathing rate, digestion and blood pressure.

We knew the autonomic nervous system was the issue because she had a 13mmHg difference in blood pressure between her left and right arm, when the normal difference is 2mmHg. Her pupils were also very dilated, which is commonly seen when the body is in a state of fight or flight, otherwise known as the stress response. 

The reason this is important for migraines is because research suggests that some symptoms from the migraine are being triggered by changes in the autonomic nervous system. Nausea is associated with digestive changes, pupil dilation and vision changes are also linked, with some people experiencing swelling of the eyelid or watering eyes.

Research also shows that targeting the autonomic nervous system as a treatment method is effective in relieving acute symptoms of migraine. This is fantastic news, as our main goal is to improve the function of your nervous system to facilitate a happy and pain free life.

After months and months of unexplained migraines and missing days of school for tests or simply because she was in too much pain, we started to make a difference. After just 2 months of care, she started to experience a significant reduction in frequency, intensity and duration of her migraines. She now continues to come in twice a month to make sure her migraines don't come back and to continue to improve the health of her nervous system to avoid future issues. 

Headaches are not normal. There can be many factors that trigger migraines or headaches. It can be as simple as you not drinking enough water, to a malignant brain tumour, and everything in between. Yes, a lot of people experience headaches, but that does not mean it's normal, nor should you have to suffer. Because there can be such a wide range of causes,  it's very important you get yourself checked out to make sure the tight treatment recommendation can be made for you.

You deserve to live a life free of pain. Don't put up with headaches just because others choose to. Look after yourself, and prioritise your health.