When migraine sufferers go through prolonged bad headaches, they experience muscle tightness in their neck, shoulders, upper back, and jaw muscles - and that becomes a driver of migraine headaches. With migraines, which are characterized by the recurrence of severe headaches, muscle tightness is a headache driver. In tension headaches, muscle tightness is the source of pain - it’s the pain mechanism. Tight muscles are both a symptom and trigger of headaches: You get a headache from tight muscles, and a headache can give you tight muscles. Are tight muscles a symptom of headaches, or are they a trigger? Thyroid function regulates energy metabolism, so people with hypothyroidism (low thyroid function) have a hard time building energy. People who are anemic lack red blood cells that bring the oxygen needed to make energy. And individuals with an iron deficiency lack the iron needed to produce hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells. People who have insomnia don’t get enough sleep to build metabolic energy. Muscles need energy to relax, so anything that causes fatigue makes people more prone to muscle tightness. When you’re fatigued, you feel exhausted because you’ve depleted your metabolic energy - the energy your cells use to function. Several factors can cause chronic tension headaches, including fatigue, insomnia, iron deficiency, anemia, and hypothyroidism - all of which relate to energy metabolism. Stress is a common reason why people have episodic tension headaches. Many of these areas have postural muscles that maintain our erect position, so they tend to be more tight than relaxed. This usually happens more in the jaw, neck, shoulders, upper back, and lower back. When you’re under stress, your body tenses up. Stress can cause muscles to tighten for a long period of time. What causes this sustained muscle tightness? Mild nausea may occur with this type of tension headache. When this low-grade headache becomes persistent, lasting for weeks or months, it’s called a chronic tension headache. An increased sensitivity to light or sound (but not both) may accompany episodic tension headaches, though it’s an uncommon symptom. When you have it for an afternoon, a day, or two days at most, it’s called an episodic tension headache. This accumulation of waste products in the muscle irritates nerve fibers, which then causes pain.Ī headache from muscle tightness would be of low-grade intensity - a mild to moderate pain that most people would rate as a 3 or 4 on a 10-point pain scale. When a muscle is persistently tight, waste products accumulate but cannot be flushed out. When we talk about muscle tightness in relation to headaches, we’re talking about sustained tightness of muscles: a persistent or prolonged state of contraction that causes pain. How do tight muscles contribute to headaches, and what types of headaches are associated with them? When muscles relax, blood circulation resumes, which then flushes out the accumulated waste products. These chemical reactions result in waste products such as lactic acid, water, and carbon dioxide. When muscles contract, they get tight, cutting off blood circulation and producing ATP through a series of chemical reactions, including the breakdown of glycogen into glucose. Once the signals stop, the muscles relax.Īdenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that stores and transports energy to cells, is the energy source for muscle contraction. Muscles contract and relax as the brain sends electrochemical signals along the nervous system to the motor neuron, transmitting these signals to muscle fibers and initiating muscle contraction. What happens in the body that makes muscles tight? Spierings, director of the Boston Headache Institute and founder of MedVadis Research, a clinical trial research center focused on headache and chronic pain, discusses the relationship between tight muscles and headaches and shares his recommendations for treatment. What goes on in our body that makes muscles tight, and how does this tightness lead to headaches? Egilius L.H. But sometimes the tightness lingers and causes a headache. Most of the time, you can ignore the tightness as it usually loosens over the course of the day. Suddenly there’s a tightness - a classic stiff neck. After a few minutes battling the snooze button, you get out of bed, stretch, and turn your head side to side.
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