Muscle Tension Headaches 

Muscle tension headaches are a common type of headaches. It is a headache caused by tense muscle in the face, neck or scalp.     

This headache gives a feeling of tightness around the head and even the neck will feel soar and tight.   

How to prevent Muscle Tension Headaches?     

There are certain ways that can be done to prevent this headache. 

Firstly, reduce sensory input
It is advised to take a five minutes break every hour or two by closing your eyes. Give your eyes a short break, especially during a long hour of concentration on working, reading or even being at the computer. 

Next, drink plenty of fluid
It is important to not forget to drink plenty of fluid, especially water to avoid dehydration. Dehydration in the body might contribute to the causes of tension headache. 

Thirdly, eat something
Be sure that regular meal is taken place everyday, do not skip meals. The reason behind is skipping meals especially breakfast and lunch tend to lower down blood sugar level, hence cause headache. 

The last thing to do in order to prevent headache is by taking a good nap
Make sure to get enough rest and sleep. It is important to maintain at a fixed sleeping pattern during sleep time, especially during weekends and holidays. However, avoid taking a nap if it causes you having trouble falling to sleep in the night. 

Besides preventing headache, there are also other tension headache relief for tension felt in head, neck or shoulders. First, relax your muscle. This action should be done several times a day or when you realized that your muscles are tension. At the time when neck muscles are tight, gently stretch neck muscles. 

Drop the shoulders down, let the arms fall loose side by side, and then slowly rotate your head from side to side. Then, gently bend your neck forward, allowing the head to falls forward. Repeat the steps until muscle is relaxed. 

The second thing to relieve muscle tension headaches is focus on breathing. Repeat the method of inhaling slowly using nose, count to ten, and exhale slowly using the same manner. Next, use hot and cold together. Warm water tends to bring the effect of relaxing and soothing the sore muscles. 

Forth, use massage. To release the tension, gently knead the muscles along the shoulders, neck and back of the skill. Gently run your head, forehead, temples, facial muscles and jaw to relieve the tension. Lastly, watch your caffeine intake. 

Tension headache symptoms might be due to the sudden caffeine withdrawal. This is meant by regularly taking too much caffeine per day and suddenly decreases the amount of intake. To avoid having headache due to this reason, be sure to control the amount of intake per day do not exceed 200mg a day, which is approximately one or two cup of brewed coffee. 

If there is an intention to cut down caffeine, do stop it gradually by decreasing the amount of coffee day by day over a period within few days to a week.

In short, it is important to notice the causes of tension headache and what ways can be done to reduce headaches.