3 Reasons To Be Optimistic About Resolving Your Headaches

Intro

Headaches and migraines are not fun! For some headaches are an inconvenience, and for others they are actually a very serious and ‘quality of life threatening’ issue. Even short term episodes of headache pain can be really frustrating and unpleasant let alone having stubborn re occurring headaches. 

The longer you have had headaches the more tempting it is to feel pretty pessimistic about your chances of resolving them. The good news however is that even people who have struggled to find solutions to their headaches and migraines frequently do succeed in reducing and even eliminating their headaches. Here are my top 3 reasons to remain optimistic about resolving your headaches and/or migraines.

Someone Else Is Always Getting Away With It.

Headaches have many possible causes, they also have many possible triggers. Headaches can be triggered/caused by stress, flickering screens, whiplash, dehydration, lack of sleep, red wine and even new car smell, to name only a few of the many possibilities.

The interesting thing about the word ‘cause’ is that we often use it a bit over-enthusiastically.  If we inject 100 human beings with 100ml of brown snake venom per person we will have 100 dead bodies on our hands. If we shoot 100 watermelons with a machine gun at point blank range we will have 100 dead watermelons every time. These examples are what straight forward causal relationships look like.

If we give 100 people 100 large glasses of red wine however we may only observe 3 or 4 headaches, and maybe only 1 migraine headache. If we expose 100 people to a week of computer screens there may only be one who reports a headache of any significance. This level of ‘causality’ implies a much more complex link between certain people and certain factors. Factors that only lead to headache symptoms in a small percentage of people are often merely triggers, as opposed to true causes. 

The great news about headache triggers is that they can often be ‘de-activated’ with the right treatments and the right adjustments to our general wellbeing. Leaving you one of the 99 people who didn’t get a migraine after they drank a glass of Pinot.  

Many Others Have Resolved Theirs.

If you have had headaches or migraine headaches for a long time they can definitely start to feel like a part of you. Over time symptoms like headaches can just seem like an extension of what your own specific body does as part of its routine. 

The simple fact is however,  headaches are not part of a natural, healthy routine for anyone. Headaches and migraines are no more normal than vomiting is normal. Vomiting is a specific indicator that something is wrong and the body is trying to resolve it, and so are headaches.

This is the reason so many people before you have successfully resolved their headaches, millions of them in fact. They resolved their headaches and migraines by successfully finding out what was getting in the way of them expressing better health, and removal those obstacles. This can be a bit daunting to try and do by yourself but don’t worry, people like me are trained to help you figure out the answers. You are not alone!! 

You Probably Aren’t Broken

Even without actually uttering the word ‘broken’ to ourselves it can be very easy to slip into a mindset where we feel a bit broken. By ‘broken’ in this sense I mean pain and symptoms that cannot be reversed or resolved. I have met countless headache and migraine sufferers over the years who had given up on trying to resolve their headaches. 

The longer you have suffered with headaches and the more times you have attempted to resolve it without success the more likely you are to start feeling a bit broken and give up on resolving them. There is a certain amount of wisdom in not flogging a dead horse after all. 

The simple fact is that there are very few headaches that relate to irreversible change in our bodies. Having headaches and migraines is a lot more like being over weight or unfit, these are all reversible states of unwellness in the body that just require the correct attention and care. 

I don’t claim to have been able to resolve every headache and every migraine that has walked through my front door in the past 20 years. What I am claiming is that in most cases where treatment has not worked, it has been very clear to me that if the patient were willing to make certain lifestyle alterations the headaches would have resolved by themselves. And these are the minority, the vast majority of headaches cases respond very well to treatment and minor lifestyle tweaks. Those who had felt a bit broken or stuck then obviously realise that they weren’t afterall! 

Conclusion 

In a lot of ways having headaches and/or migraines is like having toothache. It is not fun but there are solutions to the pain. There is also much that can be done to work preventatively for those who don’t want that pain to come back. And all the effort is worth it for most, who wants to live in pain after all.