When you have a headache, good luck with concentrating on anything. Or being creative.  Or even being nice to be around!

The thing about headaches is that they have so many causes!  And taking some painkiller addresses - you guessed it - NONE of them.

So, check for these common causes, all of which are within your power to do something about!

1.  Are you dehydrated?  If you don't know, just drink enough water until you're needing to go to the bathroom every hour.

2. Are you lacking the electrolytes that would hold that water inside your cells?  Craving salt is one indicator for that.  So try eating something salty and see if that helps.

3. Is a bone out of alignment in your neck?  This will stop the flow of energy and can create a whopper of a headache.  Try gently rotating your head through its entire range of motion.  Do this while not allowing your neck to move.  Be sure to move it forward and back too, not just side to side. This encourages your atlas and axis to realign. If that doesn't work, try moving your neck through its range of motion at the base of your shoulders. This encourages your C7 to pop back in to place. If that was the problem and you've corrected it with these movements, your headache will drain away as if by magic.

4.Are you toxic?  A clue is if your breath smells bad or if you have a bad taste in your mouth.  In that case, try REAL vitamin C.  The juice of a lemon squeezed in some water is a good source.  (The high dose products marketed as vitamin C are actually made from boiling corn syrup and sulfuric acid together, and the diarrhea that often results from high doses is often not a result of the cleansing action, but rather from the chemicals.)

5. Do you have an infection?  In this case herbs that support immune functioning will be of benefit, such as Echinacea, Golden Seal, St. John's Wort, Astragalus, Cat's Claw.

6. Do you have blood sugar problems? Some clues include if the headache arrived after eating something sugary, or alternatively, if your headache came several hours after your last meal and was accompanied by  feeling lightheaded and/or shaky.  If so, in the first instance, enough already with sugary stuff (and do the self-test for Candida, which you can find by searching for "Candida' in the archived newsletters section of this newsletter.)  In the second instance, eat high protein snacks throughout the day.

7.  Are you having a reaction to a food intolerance or an allergen?  Either one of these can cause histamine to be liberated,creating swelling. You might feel your sinuses are full, and you're sneezing or have an irritated but non-productive cough. Try herbs such as Chinese Skullcap root, (also called Scutellaria), Albezia bark + Feverfew, which have anti-histaminic and drying effects which reduce the swelling. These will help deal with the symptom short-term. Long term you need to ferret out your food intolerances. This is essential even if you react to a seasonal allergen such as pollen. When you enter pollen season with your immune system already over-busy trying to deal with a backload from food intolerances, you have a much lower threshold before your immune system responds with histamine.

8.  If you're a woman and your headaches follow a pattern related to the timing of your cycle, your headaches may be hormonally connected.  The most common of these is low progesterone in relation to estrogen, but before you go running off to the store to buy some over-the-counter progesterone cream, you'd be much better off getting a hormonal saliva test.  One reason is because you may be estrogen dominant not because your progesterone levels are too low, but because your estrogen levels are too high. In that case, always start by cleaning your liver (Garlic supplements often help).

(Note: Portions of this article were taken from Natural Female Hormone Care lessons.
To find out more,and to access a complimentary hormone self-assessment,  go here:                                   NaturalFemaleHormoneCare.com    

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