I Tried These 5 Stress Management Techniques, And They Changed The Game For My Headaches
Headaches can be difficult to manage and require a multitude of disciplines to be effectively treated. Not to mention that it’s important to reveal the root cause of headaches rather than just treating the symptoms of the headache. There’s also the factor of stress, which seems unavoidable at times. Stress can not only cause mental health and emotional symptoms, but also physical symptoms including chronic pain and headaches. These symptoms that occur due to stress are the body telling us something needs to change. And yes, stress is needed to invoke change, physically and mentally, so how can we manage stress while reducing physical symptoms, specifically headaches? While everyone is different, I tried the techniques below to manage my stress and noticed a significant improvement in my headaches.
Injury Prevention Program: OPRF
I’ve written before about injury prevention for ankle sprains and knee injuries and I want to show just how effective a basic injury prevention program can be. This past year, Oak Park River Forest (OPRF) High School’s soccer program implemented an ACL injury reduction program known as the FIFA 11+. The FIFA 11+ is a warm-up program that focuses on correcting the most common faulty movement patterns seen in adolescent female athletes. Those faulty movement patterns – knees collapsing inwards, relying too much on your quads, ankle instability, etc – can lead to all of your common soccer injuries like ankle sprains, shin splints, stress fractures, and knee injuries.
