Many people experience headaches, which range from mildly uncomfortable to downright debilitating. While there are many causes of headaches, one often overlooked factor is posture. Can bad posture cause headaches? Absolutely. Poor posture can lead to a type of headache known as a tension headache. But what is “poor posture.” It may not be what you think.
In this blog, we’ll explore the connection between posture and headaches, delve into tension headaches, explain how bad posture can trigger them, and provide some tips on improving your posture to prevent these headaches.
What are Tension Headaches?
Tension headaches are the most common type of headache. Healthcare providers often refer to them as tension-type headaches. These headaches typically manifest as a dull, aching pain that can feel like a tight band around your forehead and temples. Unlike migraines, tension headaches do not usually cause nausea or sensitivity to light and sound. However, they can still be quite painful and affect your quality of life.
Tension headaches can cause pain that lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, and in some cases, it can persist for days. The exact cause of tension headaches is not fully understood, but they are often linked to unrelenting and overreactive muscle tension. This is one the nervous system’s responses to chronic stress brought about by environmental factors, pain, and poor skeletal alignment or posture.
The Link Between Posture and Headaches
Many people think of posture as merely the position of the spine, shoulders, and neck. However, posture can impact your entire body, including your head. Bad posture is a common cause of tension headaches and even migraines. Here’s how it happens:
Neck Misalignment
Neck misalignment, how the individual vertebrae stack on top of one another, can occur at any level within your Cervical Spine:
Upper vertebrae – connect the head to the spine.
Middle vertebrae – are located at the level of your jawline.
Lower vertebrae – connect the neck to your torso or trunk.
There are many reasons why Cervical Spine misalignment occurs. However, in the end, the result is the same: a loss of the natural concave curve, which is a key player when it comes to headaches. The neck may look “straight” from the outside, but inside, it should look like the curve of a rainbow, only vertically oriented.
Muscle Tension
All Cervical vertebrae should participate or contribute proportionally to the incurve of the neck. Their contribution “carries” the head when moving or “holds or stacks” the head over the spine and torso when sitting. This is all done with the least amount of muscular effort or unnecessary contraction. When one level of vertebra in the neck shifts out of place, the workload of the muscles also shifts, upsetting the balance between our bones or skeleton. The result is that some muscles will overwork, and some will underwork, changing how the head is carried through space.
This shift alters which muscles the nervous system can use to do its job of keeping your head and eyes aligned forward and along a horizon line. The nervous system fires up additional muscles in the shoulders, back, jaw and legs and feet in an attempt to maintain the normal “stack” of the head over the pelvis and the feet. The bottom line … more muscle tension. This tension becomes chronic and squeezes or compresses the Cervical vertebrae. This compression over time leads to diagnoses such as bone spurs, osteoarthritis and even stenosis. These bony changes not only result in pinched nerves in the neck but can also compress the spinal cord at that vertebral level.
Forward Head Posture (FHP)
Forward head posture (FHP) is another common consequence of misalignment or poor posture. It occurs when the head juts and leans slightly forward and down, often due to looking at phones or computer screens for prolonged periods. This position causes a change in the natural cervical curve and, over time, hyperextension of your upper and lower cervical vertebrae. This posture configuration causes the muscles of your neck, face, and upper back muscles also to work hard, never giving them a chance to rest or let go. This chronic state of contraction builds up energy expenditure by-products and pro-inflammatory chemicals. Not uncommon, you feel discomfort, fatigue, muscle strain, muscle knots or spasms, and tightness radiating to your head and face—Tension Headaches!
More: Can Bad Posture Cause Stomach Pain?
Can You Fix or Prevent Posture-Related Headaches?
With the link between bad posture and headaches now clear, it’s time to focus on how to address and prevent these issues. Improving posture is a gradual process, but you can make lasting changes using your attention. Here are three effective strategies to enhance your posture and wellness habits that will minimize the risk of posture-related headaches:
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Regular Posture Checks
Make it a habit to check your posture regularly throughout the day. Whether you’re working at a desk, sitting at a table, or even standing, take a moment to assess:
Breath: How expansive is your breath? Shallow, quite, barely breathing? Draw in a long, slow inhale. Are you lifting the front of the chest and shoulders to do that? Try it again, allow the chest to be quieter, and consider expanding the surface area and circumference of your lower torso, back, and especially the area below the belly button. Exhale, releasing any unnecessary “holding on or bracing” that often occurs in your shoulders, jaw, eyes, mouth, and tongue. Inhale again, expanding in all directions: side-to-side, front-to-back, and top-to-bottom. Repeat several times throughout the day.
Eyes: As you read this text, where is your line of sight? Or, notice if your eyes are diverted down, below a natural horizon line? Is the head also diverted down? After reading this sentence, lift your line of sight up and forward to the natural horizon line and notice if your head also changes position.
Now close your eyelids. Where is your line of sight? Still the same place, or does it change? Keeping the eyelids closed, draw your awareness and your attention to your right eye. Let your attention track or follow your right eyeball as you look up toward the ceiling and then across the ceiling, as though you wanted to see the top corner of the room. Return along the same pathway, bringing the eyeballs back to rest in their eye sockets, looking back out toward the horizon line. Repeat 2-3 times. Be sure to pause for a few seconds before starting the movement again. Repeat the movement on the left.
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Cell Phone Ergonomics
Everyone knows by now that creating an ergonomic workstation is essential for supporting healthy spinal alignment and posture, especially for long hours of sitting:
Adjust your desk so your computer monitor is at eye level.
Choose a chair with proper back support
Knees at a 90-degree angle.
Keep your feet flat on the floor.
But let’s jump into reality. People are spending more and more time on their phones doing work. Now, pick up your cell phone and look at the screen. Notice how your eyes are diverted down, and the “computer monitor” is no longer at eye level. After a while, this downward diverted position of the eyes will draw your head forward and down. Your teeth will automatically come together, making it more likely to tighten or clench the jaw closed. Your breath becomes shallow, and your whole body is held in stillness by many muscles throughout your entire body as your eyes dart back and forth and up and down, taking in the content on your phone screen. Maintaining this eye position takes A LOT of energy, which translates to a lot of muscle tension. These are the negative effects of prolonged phone usage that we need to be aware of and address.
So let’s change ONE small, but profound thing. Raise your phone screen two inches, upward. This adjustment is simple and easy to do, and you’ll notice the benefits almost immediately. If it initially feels tiring to change your cell phone position, consider targeting your arm muscles for strengthening. Another option is to hold or support the weight of the phone from the bottom rather than grasping the middle. This will naturally lift the screen higher, aligning your eyes and head with your spine, reducing the forward head lean and the associated muscle tension.
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Tongue Sweeps
It is uncommon to most to link the tongue to FHP and tension headaches. But here’s the connection. It has to do with your jaw. Chronic and episodic stress events or downward diverted eyes in reading or always looking down at the floor, have the capacity to draw the teeth together. Before you know it, accumulated tension builds in the jaw muscles. And guess where the largest muscle responsible for closing your mouth has it origins…Yep, the sides of your head. Repetitive contraction of the Temporalis Muscle, outside of its chewing responsibilities, can refer band-like pain around the head and even into the forehead.
If you have ever been told to just let your jaw relax, you know how difficult that can be. Try this instead. Begin to protrude your tongue out of the mouth to hang over the lower lip. Sweep the bottom of the tongue to the right sliding along the lower lip until you reach the corner of the mouth. Gently press the tongue into the lower corner of mouth. Let go of the press and sweep the tongue across the bottom lip to the starting position. Bring the tongue back into the mouth. Pause. Notice if the lips or muscles around the mouth are a little softer. You might sense that the back teeth on the right have a little more space between them. Repeat the same movement again but allow the tongue to press the upper corner of the mouth. Try the movement pattern sweeping the tongue to the left, 2-3 repetitions. Stop and notice how the jaw or chin can hang down toward the torso without the head and eyes pulling down or forward. Notice the quality of your breath. How are these qualities different from that which you normally experience.
Living Your Best Life:
Improve Posture and Wellness Habits
It’s time to act. Only you can make lasting changes. Your ability to choose where your eyes and head are in space is your call. Start now to build a habit of awareness of changing the level of your cell phone screen both in sitting and standing. Bring it up! And with it, your eyes, head, and posture will shift too. Healthcare and Wellness Professionals can help by increasing your knowledge of how the body and nervous system work together. Their use manual therapy interventions and massage can shift some of the muscle tension contributing to headaches. But not all of it. They can teach you movement and exercises to support your head and overall spinal alignment and posture. But in the end, it’s your own self-awareness that will be the key. This is how you create the best support for living your best life.