You know the feeling. After a long hard day of working, maybe with a bit more stress, or bad posture, and you feel it coming on. It wraps around your head like a vice, causes neck and shoulder pain, and puts you in an absolutely foul mood. So what IS a tension headache?
What causes a tension headache? And what can you do to manage it? A tension headache is actually the most common type of headache. Research has not yet managed to establish the root cause of tension headaches.
Stress, however, is usually referred to as a common cause. The Mayo Clinic states that there are two main divisions of tension headaches, episodic and chronic.
As the name suggests, episodic tension headaches occur less frequently than chronic, lasting from as short a time as 15 minutes, up to a week.
Chronic tension headaches, on the other hand, occur more often, lasting hours, possibly days at a time, for more than 15 days each month. Imagine having a headache for half the time of each month! Poor posture has also been identified as a possible cause of tension headaches. This is why doctors recommend standing up from your desk every half hour and moving around. If your neck muscles and shoulder muscles become very tense, they can actually cause the muscles in the base of your skull to tense up as well.
