Headaches are a common health condition that, according Healthline, 7 out of 10 people face at least once a year. When you have a headache, it’s easy to just want to take Ibuprofen and be on your way.
However, sometimes, it might be better to take a more natural approach to healing. These remedies can be just as effective as medicine. Try incorporating these steps into your routine in order to prevent and ease your headaches:
1. Exercise
Exercise not only helps improve the production of endorphins, leading to an increase in positivity, but also helps reduce overall stress. Incorporating exercise into your daily routine can have substantial effects on reducing the severity and frequency of headaches.
Since headaches often stem from stress, next time you feel one coming on, lace up your sneakers and go for a run. Your headache is not guaranteed to go away, but exercise will certainly help with the severity of the pain and improve your mood.
2. Meditation
I am a big advocate of daily meditation, as it is known to reduce daily stress levels and improve mindfulness. Meditating every day can shorten the duration of headaches in the long run as well as minimize their pain levels.
However, you can also mediate on the spot to mitigate a current headache. Try pinpointing where your headache came from. Headaches often stem from some sort of tension or stress in your life and meditation can help lessen those feelings of stress.
Sometimes, the only thing we need is to breathe deeply. Breathing in deeply can be done in meditation and can help increase one’s air flow and circulation. Next time you’re suffering from a headache, take 10 minutes to breathe and tune in with your mind.
3. Journal
Journaling is similar to meditation in that it requires you to be present with your thoughts and immerse yourself in your emotions. When we try to suppress emotions, they often come back with a vengeance, and one way they return is in the form of headaches.
Doing this every day ensures that you are in touch with your emotions on a daily basis, which can help prevent a headache from arriving. Sometimes, the best cure for one is to simply be mindful and in-tune with yourself.
4. Hydrate!
Dehydration is a common cause for headaches and migraines. Dehydration occurs when your body is losing more water than it is intaking, such as not drinking water after having a sweaty workout or forgetting to drink water when you’re out in the hot sun all day.
Luckily, there’s an easy fix for this: just drink water! We should already be drinking at least eight glasses of water a day, so make sure to drink a little more if you know you’ll be outside in the heat or doing something physically exhausting.
5. Use essential oils.
Aromatherapy is a holistic approach to healing that uses essential oils to prevent and treat a range of issues, one of the most notable being headaches. Lavender and peppermint are the essential oils best known to help headaches.
Essential oils can be used in a variety of forms: you can waft essential oils from the bottle, dilute them with a carrier oil then rub it into your temples, or add a few drops to your bath.
I recommend keeping a few bottles of essential oils in the house at all times because you never know when you’ll need them. These are some of my favorite essential oils and their different healing properties.
6. Rest your eyes.
You may notice that after you spend extended periods of time looking at your laptop, you feel pain right between your eyes.
This is most likely caused by the glare of your computer screen and/or poor computer brightness. Eye strain is caused by these prolonged periods of looking at a screen, and in turn, can create a particularly painful headache. If you think this applies to you, then the remedy is simple: take breaks from using your computer.
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, it’s important to follow the “20-20-20” Rule, which says that for every 20 minutes, you should look at an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds. I recommend doing this every day and monitor any improvements in the severity of your headaches.
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Headaches are caused by a range of factors, so if you’re able to pinpoint the trigger, you may be able to ease the pain yourself. Ibuprofen is always a good option to cure a bad headache, but overall, I recommend incorporating these methods into your daily routine to help ease general stress and reduce the frequency of headaches.
Reflect & Refresh 