Headaches range from a mild annoyance to severe and debilitating, making it hard to think or function properly. For some these become regular weekly, or even daily occurrences. Pain relief medications may help to ease the headache you have, but they don’t do anything to prevent them from recurring.
People often seek out acupuncture for headaches. I have worked with many people over the years for issues with headaches and have found a few things to be important contributing factors:
Chronic neck tension and posture Many of us spend long hours in front of computer screens. Our muscles shorten and adapt around this posture to make you more efficient at staring at a screen. Great for getting smashing out some admin, but not so great for feeling good. Some of the muscles that shorten in our classic desk posture are the traps, sternocleidomastoids (SCMs) and suboccipitals. Certain trigger points can form in these muscles and refer headaches. If we can find a tender spot that reproduces your headache, this will be a key muscle to work with. General advice would be to break your desk posture as often as possible. Consider a sit stand desk. Do some movements that are opposite to what you do at the desk like stretching the chest and pecs, as well as the hip flexors.
Too much screen time This ties into the above but is more about eye strain and its effect on headaches. Our eyes were not designed for long periods of close distance vision, so it’s important to remember to look up, as well as looking out into the distance as often as you can. The blue light emitted from screens and devices is also an issue that not only affects our eyes but disrupts our sleep and hormonal cycles, particularly when we’re exposed to this frequency of light too much after sunset. Most phones can be adjusted to decrease blue light after sunset and there are software programs like Iris and F.lux that adjust it for your computer. If you get regular headaches and work a lot with technology, this is definitely worth looking into.
Diet and fluid intake Dehydration can be an aggravating factor of headaches, as can large spikes and drops in blood sugar from irregular eating. Coffee can be dehydrating so be mindful to reduce your intake if you’re consuming several cups per day. Avoid high sugar drinks and foods. Alcohol can be triggering for some. Drink more water. Eat more fruits and vegetables. The classic advice your grandma would give you applies here.
Stress Stress can be a huge factor in headaches, especially chronic headaches. We live in a stressful world. There’s always a push to do more and achieve more, to worry about the future, to be concerned about what others think of us, to put ourselves last. It can be exhausting. Stress doesn’t just have to be negative either, good things like caring for a newborn, starting a new business, or just having a full and busy life, are still going to trigger our stress response to varying degrees. Stress is unavoidable, but we can find better ways of balancing things out. What works best will be individual for you.
How can acupuncture help headaches?
At Acupuncture Grove in Bondi Junction Sydney all first appointments start with a look at your overall health and how the headaches are affecting your life. We’ll run through some physical assessments of the neck to identify key contributing muscles. This will give us some things to check back in with throughout treatments to gauge your response.
The acupuncture will mainly be working on promoting healthy blood flow, regulating the nervous system and releasing tight muscles. A big part of each treatment is to help your body wind down into a parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system state and start to offset the stress of chronic headaches and everyday life. Many people feel very relaxed after acupuncture.
Think of the acupuncture treatments like a work out for your body’s ability to heal, repair and recover. We have to do it enough, and at the right frequency, for your body to get strong enough not to hold those patterns of tension that have kept you in a state of chronic headaches.
If you would like to try acupuncture for headaches in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, consider Acupuncture Grove in Bondi Sydney. Servicing areas such as Bondi Junction, Bondi Beach, Coogee, Clovelly, Bronte, Waverly, Randwick, Maroubra, Double Bay, Watson's Bay, Vaucluse and surrounding Sydney suburbs. You can book online here or reach out with any questions here.
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