Touch Your Toes To Stop Your Headaches

Can you touch your toes?

Do you get frequent headaches?

If you’ve answered yes to both of these questions, you may have an easily solvable problem.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are hundreds of things that can cause headaches. A lot of the time though, they’re to do with the amount of tension in your body.

Tension comes from a long term contraction (switching on) of a muscle(s) in the body. As they remain switched on, the muscles ‘normal’ state becomes shorter and stiffer, meaning it will get less nutrients and blood flow while also functioning less efficiently at its role. 

If you struggle to touch your toes, it’s likely because some of your major muscles at the back of your body are in this shortened state. The thing is, muscles don’t just work individually. They are all connected together by fascia. 

You have multiple groups of muscles that are connected in this way. We tend to split them into six major groups. Superficial anterior and posterior, deep anterior, lateral, spiral and arm lines. Each of these contain multiple muscles large and small that work together to help us move. If one is strengthened, they all benefit. If one is weak, they all suffer. If one is tight, they all feel the tension. 

This means that tension in one place (e.g back of legs) can pull and create stress anywhere else on that chain like your buttocks, lower/mid back or your neck. 

Cervicogenic headaches can be caused by tension or stress in the muscles in your neck and shoulders. This can come from chronic overuse of the local tissues themselves, OR it can be as a result of other structures putting too much stress on them. One common example of this is dysfunction or tension lower down the line.

If you can’t touch your toes, you know there’s significant tension in the back of your body (superficial back line) putting unnecessary stress on all structures involved.

The two are undoubtedly linked. 

 

So, if you work on your flexibility and improve this movement, your tension will reduce. Your superficial back line will become more mobile and thus headaches will be impacted.