Manage Your Headache Painlessly – Part 3

Manage your headache by excercise

Previously we talked about the right postures for sitting and standing/walking. Today we are going to share with you how to manage your headache by exercise and sleeping.

Exercising

I personally believe that Singaporeans are lacking exercise. More and more people are becoming more unfit and obese. In fact it was reported that the government decided to extend the Basic Military Training duration for obese recruits because the government felt that the recruits need more time shed weight whilst learning their syllabus in order to become better soldiers. This should not come by as a surprise as a sedentary lifestyle with fast food as the common and popular choice of food becomes that of a typical Singaporean lifestyle.

At this point of time, you may be thinking what does regular exercise got to do with headaches? Regular exercise affects us physiologically in 3 aspects:

1. It improves our fitness.

2. It improves our blood circulation.

3. It soothes and relaxes the body. Better fitness will help us to improve our health. A healthier body minimizes the impact and frequency of headaches. The same goes for blood circulation. Most of the time when we have cramps, aches and strains, the affected parts will have poor blood circulation. If you take a look at most of the professional athletes, you will realise that they have great body posture. This is so because when you work out often, you will have had work out your muscles and joints. It is known that muscles grow when they are relaxing, provided that the muscles have worked out before the relaxation. When your body becomes stronger, the normal postures and physical activities will put on lesser stress on the joints and the pain sensitive areas, thus minimizing headaches.

Sleeping

Most people when they turn in for the night, their heads are down and shoulders are forward; they kind of tuck themselves up and in. When you sleep like this, you’re stretching your back out and bringing your chest, arms and neck in. As a result, you’re causing these muscles to tighten up overnight. You want to relax your muscles when you sleep and the only way to go about doing it is to sleep on your back.

Sleeping on your back represents a neutral posture; it represents a very straight posture that ensures that your body stays in alignment. If you can keep your body in alignment, it won’t stretch or tighten up while you sleep. A lot of people wake up with stiff necks, with their chests kind of tight and sore. Maybe their backs ache a little bit. When they sleep all curl up, it causes their neck, back and shoulder muscles to stretch and tighten up.

Do you always toss and turn while sleeping? If you actually do, it is because that your muscles are tightening up when you are asleep. This will cause you to be tired and fatigued even though you may have sufficient hours of sleep. Thus you have to sleep on your back so that those muscles do not get stretched out. The key towards sleeping well on your back is to support your neck. This means that your pillow should be supporting your neck, not too high that it stretches and not too low that it strains the neck.

The previous post as well as this post has covered on improving body postures from the 4 routine activities that we do daily. The next article will focus on the different types of headaches. See you soon!

Our Recommendation for Additional Reading Christian Goodman.

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