Headaches Causes Solutions
| 01:36 – 05:12 | Magnesium |
| 05:18 – 09:24 | Avoid Food Triggers |
| 09:25 – 12:52 | Avoid Strong Smells |
| 12:57 – 16:41 | Hydrate |
| 16:42 – 20:12 | Chiropractic Care and Headaches |
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:00:06] So five ways to help with headaches. What are we talking tonight about Ben? Yeah.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:00:10] So I decided to bring this topic to light because, in our clinic, we see a lot of people who suffer from headaches and are many tons, and there are many reasons why you can have a headache. And so we’ve already discussed those in previous episodes, but we want it to be able to discuss what are the solutions, what are the remedies, what are the things that you can do to help yourself when you do have an episode or a bout of headaches, which can be a debilitating condition? And so we try to give as many inputs and as many things as we can to our clients to help them reach greater heights in their life and eventually rid themselves of the symptoms, which is a headache.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:00:51] And it’s good to good to tell the people here. In case you missed it, we did an episode before on headaches where we talked about the different types of headaches. So tonight we just wanted to go through some of the solutions for those headaches. But maybe we can give a quick review of what those headaches were. I know there was a tension headache and there was a cluster headache. There was. We talked about migraines. What else?
Magnesium
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:01:18] Cervicogenic headaches? Right? Headache originating from the neck. Right. There’s a very common type of headache, and most people don’t realize that that is their headache until they start having their spine taken care of by a chiropractor. But yeah, tonight we’ll be talking about these solutions. Our first solution is magnesium.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:01:40] My favourite.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:01:41] Yeah. So one of our top supplements, definitely in the practice is magnesium. Probably one of the first things that we have are patients on one because it’s a really strong muscle relaxant. And so it’ll help to decrease the tension, especially for those suffering from a tension-type headache as well as a cervicogenic headache in the muscle. And so it gets that nervous system to calm down a little bit. Therefore, relaxing in the muscles most times helps people with their sleeping as well.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:02:12] Yeah, magnesium is probably one of the like, like you said, our top-selling supplement in the office. I love magnesium because there are too many side effects of magnesium is a very safe supplement to take. One of the things that we typically do in magnesium, one thing that I tell my patients is that to know that you’re taking enough, typically what you do is you’ll dose up to the amount that you’re going to end up taking. And what happens when you take two months, you’ll have some loose stools, so you’ll start to see your stools get a little watered down a little bit.
And that’s when you know you’re taking a little too much magnesium, so you kind of back off a little bit and the benefits of magnesium. This is probably one of the supplements that’s made me look the best with vitamin D. People always come back and they say, Holy jump, it’s like, This is just amazing. I have more energy. My sleep is better. I don’t have restless legs because of the impact on the muscles. If you have a tension-based headache, you’re going to have probably great results with magnesium.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:03:13] Now that can be taken in capsule form can be taken in powder form. I take the powder form because I finally get a bigger bang for my buck in terms of ability. We have the reactive magnesium in the clinic, which is from Ortho Molecular and one school gives you three hundred grams of magnesium, which is pretty much three hundred grams, right? You know, when you’re taking supplements, sometimes it says four hundred and you’re probably absorbing one hundred of it and the rest is going in the toilet.
This magnesium is really, really absorbable, which is why it’s going to be a little more expensive. But you’re buying quality, and with quality comes results. So I know you guys sometimes will probably look at the price and say, I, you know, I’ll buy the $15 one. But if it’s not doing anything, it’s $15 in the garbage and you’re never really getting better. So magnesium is something that is very, very powerful and can bring about a lot of things in terms of relief from muscle tensions and also sleeping issues as well.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:04:12] Yeah. And so some, some people ask, Well, how do I know if I’m, you know, magnesium deficient? Well, some of the symptoms of being magnesium deficient or lack thereof are a headache, fatigue, a loss of appetite, nausea and muscle crap and muscle cramping, muscle cramping right tingling and muscle pain, right? Muscle contractions. And so these are signs that you know you may be deficient in magnesium. You can always go and get a panel done as well if you’re if you really want to be certain.
But most times what we find is when you pair this with people who have headaches, it does help with their symptomatology, and it helps us a lot of other factors in our life as well. What you’ll find are most times people with headaches aren’t sleeping well. And this just pairs, it’s just a perfect, perfect, perfect thing to put together.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:05:04] And you probably can’t get away with just eating dark chocolate enough to get your magnesium. So I know you see dark chocolate here in the background. Yes, it is in there. All right.
Avoid Food Triggers
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:05:17] So avoid your food triggers, and so if you know that you get a headache after eating something. Then maybe you should try to avoid that, because there are foods that will trigger a headache that has the chemicals in them that will cause that, namely nitrates and nitrites. We’re just talking about eating grass-fed beef, natural foods and how these don’t have any of those preservatives in those nitrates. And these will oftentimes trigger a headache for a lot of people.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:05:51] Yeah. And also along the lines of nitrates and nitrites are going to be MSG’s, right? A lot of times people can get headaches from MSG. You know, sometimes they say, Oh, it must be from Chinese food. It’s not, you know, any you can get it. There’s MSG and a lot of stuff, right? And I hate to kind of paint everybody with the same brush, you know, so you know, it’s in many foods and like sugar, it’s often hidden in there. You know, and also I’d like to mention, you know, along with the eight and the eight is the sulfates and the sulfates in wine, a lot of people get headaches after drinking red wine.
I will say that one of the things that you can do is we just learned this last night. Janelle was telling me about this, that new world wines specifically like California wines, North American New World wines have a lot of toxins because we tend to do farm stuff and cultivate stuff a little differently than the old world, like in Europe. So a lot of people are OK with old-world wines that can France, even Australian wines, but they’re not okay with Napa Valley cabs or anything that’s in North America. I had a lady to this morning, she said.
I can’t have any wines that are from Canada or the U.S., but I’m fine with French wine. So again, you got to have your experience will tell you. And if you look and you want to be aware of what’s creating your headaches, start tracking your headaches in terms of when they happen and then be aware of what you did during that time period. And you may notice, yeah, you know, jeez, it is this or it is that. So definitely it’s doable to find if there are triggers, sometimes there aren’t. So, you know,
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:07:43] Yeah, they’ll often say that you know, you can try a try and elimination diet, which is essentially what Dr. Roach is talking about, where you just eliminate one or two things from the diet and just see how it affects the way that you feel. You know, you might try saying, Well, you know what? I’m not going to eat any hot dogs, sausages or bacon. Anything with preservatives in it for 30 days.
Give yourself a 30-day challenge and see how your body changes. See the response that it has because these things will have an impact on your blood vessels in the way that the blood flow is. Maybe it causes a bit of expansion, which may lead to a headache. And so you want to make sure that you’re able, OK, well, if it’s my foods, then this is probably the easiest thing that I can check in the easiest thing that I can use to take care of that. Figure it out.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:08:31] And if it is bacon, there is a helpline you can call if you’re depressed about not being able to have bacon.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:08:37] There are so many options for breaking out there. I was going to say the natural. The natural wine scene is actually making a huge comeback because a lot of people are looking towards the sulphate-free non-preservative route for wine. And so we are seeing this huge boom, but they are really hard to find here in Nova Scotia. That or I just don’t have a connect and I did try looking for natural wine but still don’t have a great source.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:09:05] There isn’t here in Nova Scotia. And I mean, it’s tough when you go to a wine store just to ask for even organic wine, right? And I mean, even organic wine doesn’t mean that it’s not going to have preservatives, right? Because it can mean that the grapes are grown organically but don’t necessarily mean you’re not going to have these sulphates. All right, I love it. It smells.
Avoid Strong Smells
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:09:32] Yeah, so mostly, you know, cleaning products and perfumes, right? These oftentimes, you hear, will trigger a headache. And so we oftentimes will say, Well, you know, if you’re one of these people, then you definitely don’t want to walk through those perfume aisles in the bay, that’s for sure. You want to steer clear and maybe head towards the shoes. And sometimes that area smells a little too smelly for me, too. But yeah, a strong smell is definitely a trigger of people’s headaches.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:10:01] It’s amazing when you walk through the aisle, you know, the laundry detergent stuff like that and the cleaners, it’s unreal how strong that is. I know when we moved into our new house, just the off-gassing from the glue, from the carpets and the paint. And I know a lot of times the pain. Now that says that there’s low, it feels easier. Anyway, some of the smell from the paint, it’s far less than what it was before. But still, you know, it’s amazing how that can give you a headache. And sometimes too, like once you’re in that space where there is that smell, oftentimes after a while, you don’t smell anymore.
You forget that there was a smell. And then a half-hour later, you get a headache and you can’t connect it to it because you don’t remember that smell. It’s just, you know, it just doesn’t dawn on you until, as I said, you know, if you’re aware and you’re trying to figure out what the heck is causing these headaches? Be aware of the food. Be aware of the smells, the perfumes. And I know we do our best at the clinic to have a scent-free area, but. You know, people are going to work and stuff like that, and, you know, it is better than what it used to be. People don’t pound the perfume or the cologne is as we used to take 15, 20 years ago.
But still, some people are very sensitive. And I always wonder if we’ve become sensitive because of how much exposure we’ve had over time, just like people can become allergic to strawberries where they were before because you’ve accumulated enough toxins or the allergen that you become allergic at one point. Right.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:11:41] And you have to oftentimes think as well to this idea of the swelling of the vessels, right? And our smell is so linked to the way that we feel we have a certain smell. It can take us right back to a moment in time. And so almost if people are smelling a smell that they oftentimes will get a headache for, it might send the body into a certain response and your headache might just be a symptom of that response itself. And so keeping your body away from those triggers, those smells are going to therefore limit the symptom, which is that headache.
But I just I’m talking about smells, you know, and that and that system itself is very, very cool just how linked, how linked it is to the limbic system in the way that we feel. So, yeah, definitely what you’ll find is there’s a lot of people will smell tobacco and they say, I can’t be in a house where people are smoking cigarettes. I just can’t. It will give me a headache. I don’t feel right. So fair enough, right? Because it was linked to a feeling and a predisposed, you know, experience that an individual has had and they just don’t want to live that again.
Hydrate
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:12:54] Yep, totally. All right. No surprise hydration. Definitely one of the top things, and you can definitely expand this out to a broader reason than just, you know, staving off headaches. Hydration is the key to a lot of things. I often joke that you know, if there was an alien that hopped on this planet, you had to tell him one thing that was important in order to survive as well. You know you got to stay hydrated. Like, it’s so important in order to keep your muscles hydrated is the key because muscles that are dehydrated tend to shorten and not be as a lifestyle and start to contract.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:13:33] Yeah, and what they found is that actually one third of people who suffer from headaches were dehydrated. And so that’s thirty-three percent of people who have headaches are not drinking enough water every day. And I believe that it says that, you know you should drink, you know, eight cups of water a day. I usually keep a bottle of water, you know, by my side all day long, and I have no problem going over having a sip if I need it. And it’s just great to have it because if you have it, you’re drinking it. There’s no question.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:14:08] Yeah, what I what I often tell people is, you know, there’s a lot of equations with they’re always listen to a podcast not too long ago, and they were kind of debunking the whole eight glasses half your body weight in ounces, all the things that you hear and the body will let you know. The more you’re aware, the more you drink water, the more you’re aware that you’re thirsty. And thirst can sometimes be confused with hunger and you think you’re hungry, so you’ll go and eat all this time, you’re really thirsty. So the key is just to have water there, and when you’re thirsty, drink it right.
Most of the time, if you’re drinking the amount of water that you should, at the end of the day, your urine should be a very light yellow. Unless you’re taking multivitamins and stuff, your urine should be light yellow. And if that’s what it is, then you probably drank enough water, but just have it close to you. Because if it’s not there, if it’s out of sight, it’s going to be out of mine. And at the end of the day, you maybe didn’t have great posture because you sat at a desk all day long. So I had bad posture. Dehydration is the perfect equation for attention, headache at the end of the day.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:15:15] Yeah. One of the top tidbits that I can get for drinking a little more water is just adding that lime or lemon or some kind of natural flavouring to your water to give it that extra kick. To give it that excitement, some people find water is boring. That’s where they drink other things instead. But add that lemon or lime, and there are a lot more benefits than just drinking more water. But having that extra citrus in there will give you some minerals as well. That may help you get through the day and give you that extra bit of energy, as well as steer away that that thirst or hunger.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:15:51] Perfect. So we are talking about ways to avoid headaches for those of you just joining us right now. This is the forty-eighth episode, so if you’re enjoying this conversation, please give us thumbs up or heart. And if you’ve learned something, please again give us a little thumbs up or heart. It’s cool talking about this because it’s so prevalent like Ben said. You know, in our clinic, I would say it’s probably lower back pain. Obviously, number one, because most people know to go to a chiropractor, they have low back pain.
Number two would be cervical problems, neck and threes, probably headaches, right? It’s probably number three in terms of the most common things that we see people for. Definitely prevalent. If you have anybody that you know is suffering or even if they don’t know they’re suffering, people don’t necessarily announce they suffer from headaches. Go ahead and share this episode. Make sure that it gets to other people as well. Oh, yes. Could leave this one out.
Chiropractic Care and Headaches
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:16:47] You can’t forget about the power of chiropractic care and the management of headaches, and so chiropractic care would have to be one of the number one techniques used to manage headaches and a natural drug free way, as well as used to change the lifestyle of people. And so it’s not always about, you know, us doing the work for you, but what are you going to do for yourself and help change your life? There’s a reason why you got to that point. So how are you going to steer in the direction of success and steer away from the direction of a symptom?
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:17:22] Yeah, exactly. If you go back to some of our episode, we were talking about the importance of the structure and the curve in enacting and measuring 42 degrees in the neck. When don’t you tend to look like this, right? And the head is forward? You’ve got this down hump on the back of the neck. Your mid back is typically flat, your pelvis is ruled backwards and everything starts to fall apart. Now, all of all the things that we mentioned today, you know, the magnesium right, the water, the food triggers.
Well, you can avoid all of that or start taking magnesium so you can add or subtract anything that we’ve talked about tonight. None of that is going to make a change to your spine. Right, so most of the time, taking care of headaches is going to be a multifactorial thing. So a lot of times people come in and this happens so often, you know, it probably happened today. It happens every week, for sure. People will come in after their second visit and they’re like, Doc, I don’t know. I’m still having headaches. After two visits, right, and after having these headaches for 18 years or 20 years and the they’re dehydrated all kinds of things.
That’s a lot of expectations, you know, to have a bolt your chiropractor solving headaches for two in two visits, right? So we have to be realistic in all the things that could create that headache. And what basically makes that five gallon jug be full? And then here comes the next drop where you have the headache brain overflows, right? So there’s a lot of things that go into creating that perfect recipe for you to have a headache that day or that that moment that is more than chiropractic.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:19:04] But again, with those chiropractic, we don’t change the structure without structure. We don’t change the relationship with the muscles and everything that gets added to the whole mess. So if you don’t change a structure, then you’re not going to change the function. And when you have this function? Headaches come and go, and they never go away, right? They just they may go away for a while and then I would say that even with better structure, your nervous system is healthier. It is also better able to adapt. So guess what?
You’re in a room and now there’s a bad smell, and maybe you don’t get a headache because your nervous system is better able to adapt to that environment at that moment. Or maybe you have red wine and all of a sudden, like, I had red wine and it came from California, and I usually have a headache, and now I don’t. Well, you might be able to better tolerate things because your structure is better. Your nervous system is healthier, and maybe you’ve eliminated enough things that even you have that red wine.
That bucket is not full and you’re not going to trigger a headache because you took care of other things, right? Yeah, chiropractic times in 16 years of me doing this and you Ben even in a short period of time of the year and whatever, how many months guaranteed you’ve seen, people get way better with headaches with chiropractic care. And they probably said to you, I’ve tried everything, and this is the only thing that’s worked, right?
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:20:28] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s probably one of my one of my greatest prides is I’m proud of all of my patients, for sure. But seeing someone who’s been suffering with a issue for a very, very long time finally get some relief. I always tell them, you know, it’s not just, you know, the adjusting per say, but it’s you being here and you helping yourself, you get better and taking the advice and actually putting it into your life, you know, actually following through. I think, you know, a lot of people can come in and get their adjustments done.
And that’s great. But that’s one piece of your puzzle. You know, it took more than one piece to make who you are. So you’re going to have to start reshaping and rebuilding that puzzle to fit the new person that you want to be. And so, yeah, one of my greatest things to see is someone who comes in and is out of a symptom for the first time feels great.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:21:28] And here’s why you should share this episode. I had I had this guy about three months ago, give or take. He shared this with me afterwards because we were at a re-evaluation point. I asked how his headaches were doing. He says, Well, I’ll tell you this. He said, I was at a point where I didn’t want to live anymore. Right. Headaches were taken over his life every single day, every morning, every waking hour, every night, throughout the day. And this guy runs a pretty big company, right? And he says, I didn’t have any patience anymore with my staff. I didn’t have any patience with my kids.
Self-esteem was starting to go down, and he was losing the battle, and it’s not until he came to see us and, you know, getting better, I think I got his life back. So a lot of times people don’t share that. And you know what? Why you came to the clinic? Low back pain, right, because you didn’t know chiropractic was going to help him with headaches, but that was the number one issue. But he didn’t think he was going to get fixed and the second biggest issue that he was thinking that chiropractors going to help him when it was low back pain. You never know how far reaching something you may think Sarah do today will affect the lives of millions tomorrow.
That was BJ Palmer, who said that the founder of Chiropractic. And so something like sharing this episode, reaching somebody who’s at their wits end say, You know what? Maybe there’s hope I’m going to go see a chiropractor and maybe they find relief that totally changes their life like it did for that gentleman that came in to see us. So again, we say this every episode, but share this episode. We got nothing to lose. It’s not going to cost you anything like clicking share, and it may help somebody else.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:23:11] Yeah. And just as a summary for those magnesium and magnesium, avoid those food triggers. Avoid the smells. Hydrate. See chiropractic care. Easy peasy chiropractic care. And the rest will follow.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:23:29] Yes, and you know, many times people kind of find that at our clinic, they’ll say, you know, I get I get a lot more information outside of just getting adjusted and we can talk about nutrition, we can talk about exercise, we can talk about other things like what we do here at Humpday. But, you know, it’s kind of like a safe haven for a lot of people where they feel they get more information than they do somewhere else. Right.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:23:52] I was going to say as well, you know, migraines and headaches are linked, but sometimes migraines. What will proceed a migraine is this aura. Right? And so an aura is kind of like you’ll see floaters or you’ll have a bout of dizziness or you’ll have a bit of hearing loss or nausea. So just something that precedes the headache per say. But chiropractic care as well for migraines is just as good. At the same time, I’ve seen so many people that come in and they say, well, ever since I started your, I have not had a migraine, said I’ve had a little bit of a bout of neck pain, but it’s never proceeded to a migraine and usually I have neck pain and then migraine.
But it hasn’t come to that point. And so it just goes to show the impact taking care of your structure and your spine and getting treated by the chiropractor can have on your quality of life. And therefore you’re better able to do the things you want to do and focus, and you won’t have a fear. You know, today the day that I’m going to have my migraine.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:24:53] Yeah, I’m need to call in sick to work. You know what I mean? Like, there’s a lot of people that are impacted in many different ways just by that simple headache.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:25:01] Yeah, like those auras, auras can be such a pain, you know, and just sets the body into an overdrive. You know, I’m about to experience migraine. Then it’s a fight or flight, and your stress response has gone way up. And so, yeah, chiropractic care. Yeah. Huge. I agree.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:25:22] So, guys, thank you so much for joining us tonight on the five ways to avoid headaches. So that was a great topic. Ben thank you for choosing that we were going to be live next week for forty ninth episode, getting close to our 50th episode there and still working on our next invited guests. We’ll keep you posted on that. If you’re joining us on YouTube tomorrow, make sure you hit subscribe so you get notifications when we have a new episode that’s been posted. And that’s it. I think that’s all we have been. Yeah, that’s all we have.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:25:55] I was going to say if anybody has any topic ideas, things that you guys want to hear about. Just let us know. Give us a call comment. Send us a message on Facebook. Send us a message on YouTube. Get in contact with us. Let us know if you have anyone that you’d like to speak on the show as an invited guest, let us know. You can also reach out to them as well and let their voice be heard here on our platform. And yeah, as per usual like and share the episodes. Let people know that we’re on here every Wednesday night at nine o’clock to do the Hump Day conversation. So yeah, for those of you who’ve been here, for those of you who dress joining us today, thank you so much and we’ll see you guys again next week.
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:26:38] Perfect. Everybody have a great night. And for all of the veterans out there, thank you for your service and enjoy the day tomorrow and we will be back at the clinic on Friday. So thank you everybody, and we’ll see you next week on Wednesday. Take care. What’s up, guys? Listen, if you like this episode, you’ll probably like the other ones, chances are pretty good, so here’s what you need to do. You need to like us and follow us on Facebook. Following means you get notified when these two guys are alive. Next, family, friends, you need to share these episodes because you never know you might help them because they need this information as well.
Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:27:14] And guys, if you ever miss an episode, make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube. That way, you can watch the episode
Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:27:19] Over and over and over again. Guys, we love you and appreciate you. Take care.
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