Do you need headache help?
Well, today I’m going to show you four easy stretches that you can do at home, to help decrease the number of headaches you may experience or decrease the symptoms you may feel altogether. I’m Dr.Kara Penson, and I’m a chiropractor at Health Works: A Family Wellness Center in Plano, Texas.
Cervicogenic and Tension headaches are common.
There are many different types of headaches and many different causes for those headaches. The two most common that we deal with, that deal with muscle issues are tension headaches and cervicogenic headaches. When you have a tension headache that’s when it feels like you have a band wrapping around your head and causing pressure. Whenever you have a cervicogenic headache, that generally starts at the base of your skull and works its way up around your head, and can sometimes come to your forehead. Sometimes it stays right in the back of your head. These two headaches deal with muscles and are caused by muscle tightness. When those muscles become irritated and spasm, they cause pressure on the nerves at the base of your skull and can create headaches.
Try these four easy stretches to help your headache naturally.
Headaches can be so painful and can prevent you from doing the things that you love. If you want to get rid of headaches naturally then try these four easy stretches:
- The first exercise we’re going to do today is called a chin tuck. (watch the chin tuck demonstrated here at minute 1:10). That’s pretty self-explanatory, but I’m going to show you how to do it and tell you what you should be feeling. When you do your chin tuck, you’re going to take your chin and put it to your chest. What you’re looking for is a nice deep stretch along the back of your neck. For example, you’re going to do this, and if you’d like a little bit of a deeper stretch you can use your hand to apply pressure to your head. After applying that downward stretch, what you’re looking for is a nice deep stretch along with the muscle along the back of your neck. Muscles right here, that’s where you should be feeling that stretch.
- The next stretch we’re going to do is lateral flexion stretch. (watch the lateral flexion stretch demonstrated here at minute 1:52). With that, it’s going to be at your ears to your shoulders on both sides and I’ll demonstrate now. With that stretch, you should be feeling the pull right through here on both sides of your neck. With these stretches, you want to be doing these three times a day and holding for 20 to 30 seconds each time.
- The third stretch we’re going to be doing is a stretch for your cervical extensors. (watch the cervical extensor stretch here at minute 2:25) That helps your head look up to the ceiling as high as you can. The stretch, is going to be similar to the chin tuck, so you’re going to look down, and then you’re going to rotate your head, and you should be feeling that stretch right along the back, again the back muscles of your neck. Again, same thing and just feel that pull.) ).
- The last stretch we’re going to do is going to be cervical rotation. (watch the cervical rotation stretch demonstrated here at minute 2:49)What you’re going to try to do is take your chin and put it over your shoulder to both sides. Just like that. Again, with these stretches, you’re going to be doing those three times a day and holding for 20 to 30 seconds each time. These stretches should be performed daily, and in order to help reduce any neck tightness that you should be feeling, that can be the cause of those headaches. That’s going to help decrease the spasm in those muscles and release the tension off of those nerves and help decrease the headaches.
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