Do you sometimes experience periods of stress, in which you also suffer headaches? Does your neck sometimes tighten up to such an extent that you get a headache because of the tension? That your headache starts in your neck? Then it can be so that you experience muscular tension headache. Muscular tension headache occurs more often than some people seem to believe and is often linked to migraines. In this article we describe symptoms and causes of muscular tension headaches and what can be done about them.

Muscular tension headache: symptoms and cause

If you suffer from muscular tension headache, you experience more headaches in periods where you are stressed or under pressure. Because of stress your neck will tense up, which in turn leads to muscular tension headache. Stress namely causes a physical reaction which makes it so that your muscles tense up so that you are able to respond to danger more quickly. These muscles include neck muscles. If you experience stress, it can sometimes be so that you have a sore neck, or that your neck is very stiff. If this progresses and gets worse, it can lead to muscular tension headache. Muscular tension headache develops due to excessive tension in the muscles in your neck. The most common cause of muscular tension headache is therefore stress. You will also notice that you will experience fewer headaches during times in which you experience less stress. Sometimes it might be so that something else is at play too, such as anxiety. Anxiety can also lead to a stress reaction which can cause the muscles in your neck to tense up.

Muscular tension headache: treatment

That which is interesting is that more than 60% of people who suffer migraines also suffer tension headaches. In some cases, tension headaches can get worse and develop into a migraine. This works the other way around, too. Many people who experience migraines, experience fewer symptoms when they are less stressed. From this example it becomes clear that stress has a large influence on headache and forms an important cause of headache. 15 Minutes 4 Me developed an online self-help program which guides you in dealing with this stress, in order to help you reduce muscular tension headaches. If you treat the underlying stress, your muscles will not tense up as much, leading to decreased amounts of headache.

Muscular tension: take the stress test

If you want to know to what extent stress might have an influence on your headache or to what extent you might suffer from muscular tension headaches, then do the free stress test! This test will let you know as soon as you are done how much stress you experience.