New persistent daily headaches: What are they? What can we do about them?

New persistent daily headaches can be slightly terrifying or even terrifying when they come on because one day, you don’t have any kind of headache but then all of a sudden, now you’ve got a headache all day every day. So, we’re talking about where do they come from, what are they, and most importantly, what can we do about them?

Hi! I’m Dr. Beth. Osteopath here at Melbourne Headache Solutions.

Chronic headaches or this new persistent daily headache, they’re essentially a threshold problem. So, with these headaches, they come on when you have reached your certain threshold and all of a sudden, the headache has now started switching on. Now, your threshold is different to my threshold, which is different to the next person’s threshold. So, essentially, we have these building blocks that contribute and build up until essentially we have reached our threshold where the headaches will turn on. Now, what are these building blocks that contribute to reaching our threshold that switch on these headaches?

For a lot of people, these building blocks are things like sleep disorders or having a terrible sleep which a lot of people have got. We need our seven to nine hours of sleep, and we need good quality sleep. So, if you’re having bad sleep, then this is one of the building blocks. If we have a stressful life or stressful events that are happening in our lives, this is another building block. If we then have poor gut health or poor diet, this can be another building block. And then if you have chronic neck dysfunctions in through here, or if you suddenly get trauma in through your neck, then this can be another building block. Same with clenching or grinding your teeth, same with being deficient in supplements and so forth and so on, and hormones as well.

Now, for some people, it’s one or two building blocks and for other people, it’s many building blocks that will pile on top of one another until eventually, you reach your threshold where your body just simply can’t take it anymore and then it gives you headaches.

When it comes time for new persistent daily headaches, for a lot of people, they’ve already had one or two building blocks, but you haven’t reached your threshold where the headaches are now presenting. But then all of a sudden, you add one final building block and then that’s enough to reach your threshold where all of a sudden, your body goes: “there’s something wrong, something needs to change so I’m letting you know by giving you a headache.”

Some people can then identify what that final point was that tipped them over the edge that gave them the headache and for a lot of people, it’s usually something like a big stressful event or maybe a neck injury or something that had significantly changed in their lives. But it’s not enough to simply change that one event so say decreasing stress, you then need to wind down all the elements that have now contributed to your headaches to then switch off those headaches to make significant changes. So, that’s what we do with new persistent daily headaches, and also these chronic daily headaches when you’ve had them for longer periods of time.

So, as I said, new persistent daily headaches can be very scary because they just suddenly switch one for no apparent reason but, there have usually been underlying causes, underlying reasons why the headaches have now suddenly turned on –it’s just that you haven’t reached your threshold before this sudden onset of the pain. For a lot of people, they’ve also had dysfunctions in through their neck for a really long time. You might have had a car accident or whiplash or a concussion or some kind of event many many years ago, so 5, 10, 15 years ago, and your neck haven’t ever been in very good health for this long period of time. So, these dysfunctions have been building up over years and years and years and years, and they’ve been contributing to, as I said, poor neck health and eventually, with other things building on top of that like stress or poor sleep or poor gut health or those sorts of things, then it’s added on top of that then build to giving you new persistent daily headaches.

Treating that area, treating the jaw, improving your sleep and your stress and your gut health and supplementing with things like magnesium and vitamin B2, then we can really make significant into new persistent daily headaches and also chronic daily headaches which are when you’ve had them for longer periods of time.

I hope this has been helpful and that you’ve learned something about your chronic headaches or your new persistent daily headaches. If you need help with your headaches and migraines, please contact us here at Melbourne Headache Solutions. It is our absolute passion to treat people suffering from headaches and migraines because no one deserves to suffer from them.