Thursday, August 19, 2010

Lack Of Sleep Could Lead To Headache

By Robert Woods

If you suffer from constant migraines, there may be a simple explanation. You may just not be sleeping regularly enough. See, the body's feel-good chemical is something called Serotonin. It is tied very closely to sleep and if you aren't getting enough sleep, you may also be lacking in this essential chemical. That chemical, or lack of it, is also tied to migraines.

The quality of the sleep you may or may not be getting is tied to the amount of noise in the environment, the amount of stress you are experiencing and whether or not you are taking drugs or medications.

Believe it or not, you really do need to keep the lights off when your sleep. This is just something the human body has become accustomed to over the course of thousands of years. Additionally, you should keep the TV or radio off when you sleep because that can keep your body from resting.

If you are one of those folks who just HAS to have the TV on in order to fall asleep consider using the TV's sleep timer mode in order to have it turn itself off automatically every night after you are unconscious. It will help to keep from distracting your sleeping brain.

Stress is another issue, and one that is harder to deal with. You may not be able to get rid of it altogether, but better managing your stress is possible. The best way to do this is to exercise more.

You should do your daily exercises before nightfall in order to improve your sleep quality. Ironically, exercising too close to bed time actually harms your ability to sleep.

Of course, your drugs and medications will harm your ability to sleep. If you take prescriptions you ought to take them early in the day if at all possible. Then there's the real drug offender: Caffeine. No surprise there.

If you can stand to do so, quit the caffeine altogether. It is a migraine trigger all by itself, so it's effect is monumental. However, if you can't ditch it, at least lower it. And also don't drink coffee or soda pop in the afternoon or evening.

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