Headaches: How to prevent them

From achy eyes to full-on migraines, headaches affect most of us occasionally and can often come on without warning. While the odd one is manageable, when they become more frequent or severe, it’s worth assessing your lifestyle to see if a specific factor is triggering them. Like many health complaints, one of the most effective treatments for a headache is to prevent it from happening in the first place. It might be a case of trial and error, but taking the time to understand the factors that bring on physical symptoms will improve your health and overall quality of life. Food intolerance tests can help with this definitely! Below we explain a little more about how to prevent headaches by changing your diet.

Try to de-stress

Unfortunately, our world can often be the perfect environment to trigger headaches. Busy, fast-moving lives often lead to feelings of stress and overwhelm, which can release hormones into the bloodstream that affect the way we experience pain. Other physical reactions to stress, such as grinding your teeth, tight shoulders and tense muscles, often come with headaches, so one physical response can lead to another. While it’s often easier said than done, trying to reduce the amount of stress in your life or finding something that counteracts feelings of pressure is something your head will thank you for.

Organise your tasks

Trying to prioritise, leaving tasks that can wait and managing time can help make life more manageable, as can saying ‘no’ to things you don’t want or need to do. Learning to relax will also positively affect your body and help stop headaches from developing. So whether it’s deep breathing, a hot bath or a walk during your lunch break, try to find something that takes your mind away from a stressful situation and benefits your mental and physical health.  

Could you have a food intolerance?

Diet is one of the biggest triggers for headaches. What you eat can often make you feel unwell without realising, so assessing your food intake could simultaneously reduce your headaches and improve your well-being. Common dietary triggers worth monitoring include caffeine, nuts, pickled meats, aged cheeses and yeast, while reducing your alcohol intake will always boost your health. Keeping a food diary can be a good idea to track what you’ve eaten and notice a correlation between your meals and physical symptoms that occur afterwards.

If you suspect your headaches are caused by a particular ingredient, taking a food intolerance test will help you find out. As well as being quick and easy to do, the results will enable you to make any necessary changes to your diet to get your health back on track. Food intolerances can often present themselves in the form of headaches, so finding out if there are any ingredients your body is sensitive to will reduce any reactions you experience in the future.

Keep up with the basics

Sometimes, a lifestyle overhaul can be enough to keep headaches at bay. Unfortunately, the primary things we need to do to stay fit and well can often suffer at the hand of the busy lives we lead, so if you suffer from headaches, take stock of the bad habits you may have gotten into. One of the first factors to consider is the amount of water you drink throughout the day. Keeping on top of your fluids will always boost your health, so keep a big bottle of water nearby that you can sip regularly. Along with drinking enough to stay hydrated, skipping meals is another common cause of headaches, so ensure your body receives the nutrients and calories it needs.

Make sure you sleep to prevent headaches

Sleep is another lifestyle factor that can often affect the frequency and severity of headaches. Poor quality or insufficient sleep can intensify feelings of stress, which is a known trigger for headaches, and not getting enough rest will always be detrimental to our health. If you have difficulty nodding off or often have restless nights, keeping your bedroom cool and dark will create an environment conducive to rest. Eating certain foods before bed can also help you feel tired by triggering the release of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. Good sleep hygiene can be a difficult habit to crack, but assessing your diet and reducing stress are all lifestyle factors that complement each other. Tackling one will make changes in other areas easier to achieve. Sleeping is a proven way to prevent your headaches.

Change your diet to help prevent your headaches

If you’d like to learn more about food intolerance tests and how they can improve your health, please message us through the contact form on our website or email [email protected].