Whether your head pain is chronic or episodic, few experiences are worse than when you are in the throes of a crippling migraine.
It can feel like you have little or no control over your pain at times. But your habits can make migraines better or worse, often without you being entirely aware of it.
But once you know bad habits which can make migraines worse, you can try to avoid those habits or replace them with healthy habits.
Following are some ways you might be making your migraines worse without realizing it.
1. Poor diet.
There are many different dietary factors which can impact migraine pain. Some people have dietary triggers they need to avoid. Others may need to increase their intake of key nutrients.
It can be difficult to pinpoint which foods and beverages you need to eat more of or steer clear of. But once you have optimized your diet, it may have a preventative effect.
Something else you can do is enhance your diet with the inclusion of a highly-rated supplement such as MY BRAIN Migraine Relief Vitamins by Eu Natural.
This supplement contains ingredients such as chaste tree berry, butterbur, ginger, feverfew, magnesium and boswellia. Research suggests that these ingredients may lead to improvements in head pain.
2. Poor posture.
Another potential factor in migraine pain is bad posture. As many of us work on computers all day or spend a lot of time on our phones, problems such as forward neck posture are prevalent in today’s world.
Bad posture can lead to chronic muscle tension as well as other structural problems which may contribute to your migraines.
3. Changing your sleep schedule.
If you regularly go to bed at different times or wake up at different times, did you know that you are throwing off your circadian rhythms?
Doing so is a migraine trigger for a lot of people. Plus, if you routinely do not get enough sleep, that can increase body-wide information, which could also make migraines worse.
Interestingly enough, if you oversleep past your usual wake-up time, your metabolism speeds up as if you already got up. The result can actually be waking up already deprived of fluids and electrolytes that you need. This too can lead to head pain.
4. Moving at the wrong times or in the wrong ways.
People experiencing pain issues are frequently told by those who do not to, “Just walk it off.”
But many people find that their migraines are exacerbated by movement, and may actually make their pain worse if they follow this advice.
Do you get migraines which seem to start as a result of exercise? There are a number of potential reasons this can happen, one of which is not pacing yourself properly.
WebMD explains, “Whatever your fitness level, never start your session without warming up for 10 to 15 minutes. The sudden demand for oxygen can trigger a migraine. The best warm-up is the exercise you’re about to do taken down a notch. And remember, stretching for 5 to 10 minutes at the start and end of your session will prevent muscle tension — another possible trigger.”
5. Taking too much medication or the wrong medication.
If you take a lot of medication to manage your headaches, you might want to dial it back in some cases.
Sometimes, overuse of medications can result in rebound headaches. Ending a rebound cycle is never any fun, but once you do, you may find that you have fewer attacks.
Also, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to treating migraines. A medication which improves migraines in one patient could make another worse.
So, if you suspect that a medication you are taking is wrong for you, consider cycling off of it to see if you get any improvements.
6. Chewing hard or talking loudly.
If there are structural problems with your jaw (i.e. if you have TMD), that can easily become a trigger for migraines.
You may never be able to fully eliminate the trigger, because you may not be able to fix the structural problem with your jaw.
But you can avoid exacerbating it. Try not to strain your jaw. That means taking steps like cutting up your food into small pieces before you eat it, tearing apart chewy foods or avoiding them, not shouting loudly, and so forth.
7. Spending spoons you don’t have.
Finally, one of the worst things you can do to exacerbate migraine pain is to attempt to “power through.”
In some cases, you may have no choice, such as when you need to hold down a job and there is no other recourse.
But if you are taking on more obligations than is strictly necessary, you might want to think about reducing some of those commitments.
Reducing your stress may not lead to what you feel is a dramatic improvement. But the next time you are super stressed, notice how much it can spike your pain. That is something worth avoiding whenever possible.
Plus, when you borrow against spoons you don’t have to power through one thing, you end up paying for it somewhere else.
It might not just worsen your pain, but also take you away from other things that are important to you which you might otherwise have been able to handle.
So, take care of yourself first and foremost. Nobody else can do that for you.
Give New Habits Time to Work
You are not going to necessarily see an overnight improvement with these lifestyle changes. It takes time for the benefits of a new diet or supplement to take effect. Adjusting your posture can take months or years.
And you may not notice how simple changes to how you sleep, exercise, eat your food or distribute your time can affect you until you have been making observations for a while.
So, be patient with your new habits, and give your body time to adjust. Hopefully, you will see some reduction to the frequency or severity of your migraines.
