Headaches are common, as the NHS says on its website “most people are likely to have experienced a tension headache at some point”. These can be anything from just an annoying ache to full on agony of some migraines where people actually tried to take the pain away by banging their head against a wall. Headaches are defined as a situation where your head “aches”.

So it is not difficult to see that any type of headache can have a major impact upon your ability to concentrate or work, but what causes them?
The most common cause we see is the tension headache, this often stems from the neck. The neck is made up of seven vertebrae (building blocks of spine), discs in between (these are soft structures which help cushion force) and muscles and ligaments all of which hold your head up.

The human head weighs around 10 – 12 pounds (4-5kg) so is quite a weight to have on top of a flexible structure, left to its own devices it will fall forwards – which is inconvenient to say the least – so our neck uses the curve it has along with the muscles and ligaments to hold it up.

It is also, according to a new calculation published in the journal Surgical Technology International (October 2014), the amount of force exerted on the head of an adult human who is looking down at their phone.
Kenneth Hansraj, a New York back surgeon, found this figure using a computer model of a human spine. An average human head weighs about 10 to 12 pounds, and tilting it down to check Facebook, send a text, or to Google, the weight of a human head increases the gravitational pull on it.

“As the head tilts forward the forces seen by the neck surges to 27 pounds at 15 degrees, 40 pounds at 30 degrees, 49 pounds at 45 degrees and 60 pounds at 60 degrees,” Hansraj writes in the paper.
With the amount of time we spend on our phones or using keyboards it is no wonder our muscles get a little tired.

We are all different, so causes of headaches are multifactorial. Therefore we will find out what is causing the problem from both your tissue and the environment (office, car, hobbies or phone use) perspective.

Then, what we aim to do is help enable your body to move as well as possible, this will allow the neck to distribute the weight of your head more effectively and take pressure off the tissue. Whilst also giving you advice and exercises to help prevent reoccurance.