Very few young kids suffer from migraines. Most people develop migraines in their teens or later. Why does this happen?
Many health researchers will tell you this is caused by hormonal development that increases your chances of triggering a migraine. That may be partly true but there is another reason, and it is the main reason why migraines develop in young people. If we played our hands right, we could mostly avoid this.
What is this reason?
If you’ve read any of my other articles on migraines, you’ll remember that the main cause for migraines and headaches is oxygen deprivation in the brain.
The four things that cause this deprivation are:
1) We don’t inhale enough oxygen – because our breathing passages are not open enough and the muscles that control the lungs are not effective enough.
2) Only a small percentage of the oxygen that reaches the lungs actually goes into the blood stream. This is due to bad breathing habits, which again are caused by ineffective muscle control in the lungs.
3) The blood stream through the neck is constricted due to tension in the neck muscles. These muscles are actually supposed to help the heart pump blood up to the head but instead they block it.
4) Tension in the muscles around the head. These muscles are supposed to be flexible and help the heart pump the blood to various areas of the brain but they’re often stiff and do the opposite.
Now what does this have to do with teenagers developing migraines? Everything!
Think about it: Up until age five or six, kids run around playing all day. They hardly sit down to eat dinner. And given the choice they’ll sit down on the floor with their plate. This is the position nature wanted for us.
Then school begins. Hours are spent sitting on uncomfortable chairs, leaning over schoolbooks. The older kids get, the more they sit. They sit in school, in front of the TV and computer, talking to friends, eating supper. More sitting, less running, jumping, rolling and crawling.
Our back was not meant for all this sitting. Some muscles become weak due to little use while others take over their task. The muscles that were meant to control our lungs are now used to balance our body. The neck and shoulders get stiff and blood doesn’t flow through like it used to.
In “less developed” countries where people do not sit on chairs, migraines are much less common and sometimes almost non-existent.
There are other factors. For example worries and anxiety kick in as we get older. The teenagers years are the toughest years in many peoples lives - trying to fit in and figure out life.
Many teenagers unconsciously develop the habit of freezing and they stop breathing for several seconds when faced with tough decisions. This habit often follows them throughout their life and can cause repeated migraine and headache attacks.
We have to retrain our systems. Give the right muscles their right task, so they may fill our body with oxygen and deliver it to our brain. This is the only way to undo the harm we’ve done to ourselves and permanently eliminate migraine and frequent headaches. That’s what my natural migraine and headache exercises do.
Warm regards,
Christian Goodman
PS: You can find all the program I mentioned in this article on the right-hand side of this page.