Okay, since yesterday’s post was a longer one I will keep this short and hopefully sweet. Yesterday, I woke up a bit early and found that I had a pretty gnarly headache. In the past, I assumed this was just because I was under rested, or that it was just “part of life” after TBI. That was until I started looking into the cause of  headaches.

After 5-10 minutes of Googling, I found that most headaches (or a large portion) are caused by tightness of the muscles that insert into the skull, primarily those on the back of the neck. To experiment, I began foam rolling the muscles on the back of my neck every time I had a headache. Eventually I came to find that this helped a lot. In fact, I would say 9/10 times it eliminated my headache. Sure, if I was sleep deprived I was still tired, but being groggy is better than being groggy with a massive headache.

For those of you who really want to fix the root of neck tightness, I have found that if I roll out my traps like in this video, my neck tightness goes away. My guess is that this is because tightness in my neck originates in the traps.

Lastly, a massage from a friend works just as well, especially if they have strong hands. If you are physically unable to lay on your back with a foam roller or lacrosse ball under your neck than a massage will do the trick.

Take care of yourself, and don’t do this until you bleed. If you cant’ take a deep breath while releasing these muscles, you need to ease up.

Enjoy

Michael