Tag: Kathryn Merrow

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What Causes Tension Headaches?

Tension headaches should more accurately be called Muscle Tension Headaches.  Muscles are the most common cause of head pain.  Almost always, in fact!

When your jaw muscles get tense or your head moves forward, instead of over your body, the muscles around your upper back, neck and face get strained and tight.

Tight muscles clamp down on nerves and blood vessels.  The result is a muscle tension headache.

What natural steps should you take to get rid of tension headaches?

1.  Watch your posture.  Try to keep it neutral and straight.  A strong back will help with this.

2.  Use a pillow or rolled towel behind your waist to help you sit upright.

3.  Ice the back of your neck.  Try to wrap your cold pack all the way down to the notch between your collar bones.  Some people find heat to be more beneficial.

That’s it in a nutshell:  Muscles cause painful tension headaches.  Discover more about headaches and natural relief in this easy to use book:

Head Pain Natural Relief

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How To Get Rid Of Swelling In Your Legs Caused By Sitting At A Desk

If you sit a lot during the day and your legs swell but the swelling goes down overnight try these suggestions.

When you are stuck at the desk do the same thing that is recommended during air travel:

I call them ‘butt-ups.’  Squeeze your buttocks; make the buttock muscles tight so that you get pushed up.

If you did this several times, you would look like you are bouncing.  Do it several times in a row.

The muscle contractions get the blood and lymph fluid moving.  You can do this with large or small squeezes.  You can also alternate sides–left, right.

Also, to help reduce the swelling in your legs, at other times, lift one Continue reading “How To Get Rid Of Swelling In Your Legs Caused By Sitting At A Desk”

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Jaw Pain Can Be Caused By Temple Muscles

There are two sets of large muscles that can cause pain in your jaw and the area around your jaw joint:  the massater muscles and the temporalis muscles.  Check out the Category for Jaw Pain on this website for more articles on the massater and other muscles that can be involved.

You can feel the muscle that crosses your jaw joint if you place your fingers over the joint and pretend you are chewing.  That’s the massater.  You have two–one on each side.

You can also feel the temple muscles by placing your fingers on the sides of your head in line with your eyebrows and pretending to chew.   Again, this muscle is on each side of your head.  It the temporalis muscle.

There is a depression in your skull on each side and the temporalis muscle is packed in there.  It’s actually a pretty good sized muscle.

The red area in the picture is Continue reading “Jaw Pain Can Be Caused By Temple Muscles”

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Does Mousing Causes Pain Behind Your Shoulder?

Your computer mouse can cause pain around your shoulder blade and below your armpit.  Here are a few things to do that will help you prevent that.

1.  Stretch your arm up and slightly backward.

2.  Squeeze your shoulder blades toward your spine.  Or try to touch your elbows together behind your back.  You probably can’t really do that but it gets your muscles moving in the right direction.

3.  Place your mouse in Continue reading “Does Mousing Causes Pain Behind Your Shoulder?”

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Lose Ten Pounds And Get Rid Of Foot Pain Naturally

Feet hurt?  Feet take a beating all the time.  And if you are carrying a few extra pounds that creates a lot of stress on the joints, bones, muscles, ligaments and tendons in your feet.

A rheumatologist (a medical doctor who specializes in arthritis and similar diseases) said that if you lose just ten pounds–Just Ten Pounds!–a lot of your foot pain will be gone!

Gone!

She said you don’t have to get to normal weight to get rid of foot pain.  Just Continue reading “Lose Ten Pounds And Get Rid Of Foot Pain Naturally”

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Stiff Neck? 8 Tips To Get Rid Of Pain In Your Neck

Do you have a stiff neck?  Here are eight ways you can get that tight neck loosened up.

1.  Massage.  If you have massage, does your massage therapist massage, warm and loosen the muscles on the front of your chest and arms and abdomen?  Does she or he or has anyone checked to see whether you have flat arches on your feet?  Did you know that flat feet can cause neck pain?

2.  Posture corrections.  Neck muscles can pull your head forward.  I hope your massage therapist works on the muscles in the front of your neck and chest and on the sides of your neck and not just in the back?  Do you Continue reading “Stiff Neck? 8 Tips To Get Rid Of Pain In Your Neck”

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Tension Headache Natural Relief

Tension headaches should really be called Muscle Tension Headaches.  They happen when we do things that tighten the muscles that attach at the base of the head.  What are some of these things?

1.  Driving.  Most car seats tilt back too far or have headrests that push your head forward.  Either of these will strain the muscles that cause tension headaches.

2.  Couches (sofas) and chairs that have too much backward lean.

3.  Slouching or sitting on your tailbone with a rounded back.  Slouching or leaning sideways will do it, too.

4.  Forward head posture or holding your head in front of your body.

What’s the solution?

1.  Padding Continue reading “Tension Headache Natural Relief”

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How To Get Rid Of Fibromyalgia Naturally

Fibromyalgia is a whole-body pain syndrome.  A “syndrome” is a bunch of symptoms.  Symptoms are things like irritable bowel, headache, muscle pain–those are symptoms.

And your body is 100% all natural so it just seems reasonable to me to use 100% all natural methods to get rid of the things that cause pain and distress whenever you can.

I’ll bet that makes Continue reading “How To Get Rid Of Fibromyalgia Naturally”

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Pain In Your Jaw May Be Caused By Infection

If you have serious pain in your jaw, you can try doing massage on the muscles in your face. (<== click here.)  But if that only helps for a short time and the pain comes back that could mean you have an abscess.

An abscess is an infection in the space around a tooth.  It needs to be treated by a dentist.  The first treatment is with an antibiotic to clear the infection and then you and your dentist will decide what to do next.

One man went to his doctor and to a dentist complaining about the pain in his face and the roof of his mouth.  They ‘couldn’t see’ anything.  The dentist ground down the surface of a molar guessing that that might have been the jaw pain problem.

But it wasn’t.

Neither doctor listened to his Continue reading “Pain In Your Jaw May Be Caused By Infection”

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Pain In Your Jaw And Teeth Can Be Caused By Muscles

I have heard horror stories about people having teeth removed because they were painful.  But the problem is that the teeth were innocent!

After the tooth or teeth were pulled, the people still had tooth pain.  The teeth were removed but the original cause of the pain wasn’t treated.

There is a strap-like muscle that attaches your lower jaw to your upper jaw.  It allows you to chew and clench your teeth.  It is called the massater.  There is one on each side of your face.

When the massater develops trigger points (hyper-irritable areas of muscle that cause pain) it feels like the pain is in your teeth!

If you have pain on the top and bottom teeth on one whole side of your mouth there is a very good chance that the massater muscle is to blame.

Here’s the treatment:

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Why Does It Hurt To Have A Massage?

Sometimes it hurts when your muscles are being massaged.  The reason for this is usually that your muscles are on the ‘tight’ side.

Muscles are supposed to be balanced.  That means that they are all working together and none are ‘too strong.’  They are all ‘just right.’

But sometimes that’s not the case.

Sometimes muscles on one side of your body are a little tight and Continue reading “Why Does It Hurt To Have A Massage?”

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What Are Muscle Spasms and What Makes Spasms Go Away

Muscle spasms are contractions in your muscle.  Imagine you are flexing your upper arm by bending your elbow.  Your bicep muscle will pop up.  It is contracted or in contraction.

At the very same time, the muscle in the back of your arm is also going into a different type of contraction.  It has to.  That’s how muscles work.

When a muscle stays contracted for a long time it can develop a fairly constant but reversible spasm.

Sometimes a spasm Continue reading “What Are Muscle Spasms and What Makes Spasms Go Away”

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