There was a period around 2015 when we were really stressed about money. In my previous online business I relied on web traffic from Google and we got “the Google slap” which means people no longer found our website when they did a Google search for a particular search phrase.

Our traffic went down by close to 90% as did the money we were making to pay our bills. For a period of about 6 to 8 months (the time it took us to recover) we didn’t have enough money to pay our rent or our bills.

It was incredibly stressful and I was waking up every morning with a headache like you wouldn’t believe.

For a while I didn’t put all the pieces together. Yes I was stressed out of my mind trying to figure out if I needed to get a job or continue doing my work online.

I now know that it must have been an underlying level of stress that gave me those headaches every morning.

It felt like my head was in a vice all night. The tension was terrible. They were not regular headaches you’ll get when you don’t sleep at night, these were tension headaches that were really hard to deal with.

Not as bad as migraines but still I hated waking up every morning with a headache. After a while I got used to the pain and pressure around my temples. Other times it would depress me thinking that this was my new normal.

The aching could be defined more as cephalalgia in that it was a general throbbing pain covering my entire head. It wasn’t neuralgia in that it was acute or shocking, it was dull and painful no matter what I did. My head was throbbing all the time. It sucked.

As the stress lifted and we got on our feet again financially, the pain eventually went away. Thank God.

If you’re waking up every morning with a headache I’d like to share some insights I don’t hear talked about often that might help get rid of them, or at least find the cause of them.

Once you can identify the cause of these morning headaches, then you can work on correcting the cause and making sure they do not come back.

“Sleep is the kindest thing that a man can do, for in sleep we find respite from our troubles, and our bodies heal. It is in this gentle state of rest that we prepare for the dawn of new opportunities.” – Charles Dickens

Dehydration

The obvious thing to think about first is dehydration and whether or not you’re getting enough fluid intake. The general rule of thumb is to take half your body weight in pounds, and drink that amount in ounces of water.

Obviously this can vary depending on the climate you’re living in, your age, the time of year and your activity level.

I weigh 185lbs and I’m 48 years old. I live in Southern California (which isn’t too humid) and is a temperate environment. I’m pretty active in that I workout, 3x per week outside and lift weights. I drink 96 ounces of water per day.

Before I go to bed at night, I fill up a mason jar with clean filtered water and put it on my nightstand. I’ll generally add some sea minerals, fulvic minerals and high quality salt to it. Then when I wake up in the morning I’ll drink all of that down with 5 capsules of Nattokinase (to lower systemic inflammation in my body).

Then I’ll have breakfast and slowly sip on two more mason jars full of water throughout the day, leading up to dinner time. Generally I’m done with the water by 6 or 7pm. This way I don’t have to wake up to pee in the middle of the night and I still get all my hydration in.

For the other two mason jars, I’ll add all those same minerals but I’ll add either some electrolyte powder with magnesium powder along with a squeeze of lemon juice.

If you’re not hydrated your blood becomes more viscous and is not able to carry oxygen via hemoglobin and other nutrients to the cells in your body. This will create oxidative stress, muscle tension and you’ll find yourself waking up every morning with a headache.

One of the best things I ever did for my health was get on a water drinking program back in 2005. I was never a water drinker before then. Oddly enough during that stressful time in 2015 I had stopped drinking my water as my daily discipline.

Coincidence that I got those morning headaches?

“Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. It is that soothing balm that knits up the raveled sleeve of care. To sleep soundly is to embrace tranquility and wake renewed, prepared to face the challenges of the day.” – Thomas Dekker

Sleep Posture

The position you sleep in is important when it comes to putting excess pressure on your cervical spine. If you move a lot during the night, this may not be an issue. But if you are sleeping with a pillow that’s too thick it could be causing you to restrict blood flow from your torso into your brain.

There’s not much you can do if you don’t move that much at night. But you can get a better pillow that is more suited to the curvature in your neck. I’m a back sleeper mostly. I only use a pillow if I switch to either side.

“Sleep is a fundamental human need that is crucial to our health and well-being. When we prioritize sleep, we unlock our full potential, enabling us to be more productive, creative, and present in every moment of our lives.” – Arianna Huffington

Mineral Deficiency

Your body needs 92 minerals in order to function. They must be in the correct proportions and ratios. Most Americans are running on about less than 30. Minerals activate enzymes which carry out physiological processes throughout the body. Minerals are the key to life. Without minerals you would die rather quickly.

As with anything, there’s a hierarchy with minerals. Some minerals do more things than other minerals. But all 92 are required for life. Magnesium is considered the “master mineral” because it alone is responsible for 42% of your metabolic functions to happen. Roughly 3,751 of your 9,000 enzymes require magnesium.

If you’re waking up every morning with a headache, that’s a classic sign of mineral deficiency and more likely magnesium deficiency.

Here’s where I would start….Add some magnesium powder to your water along with,  salt and a few drops of trace mineral drops and a half teaspoon of fulvic ionic minerals. If you really want to take it to the next level consume one ounce of Intramax per day. I fill up a shot glass with half an ounce and add that to my water for “extra”.

“Sleep is the best meditation. When we rest well, we wake up with clarity and calmness, ready to embrace the new day with a refreshed mind and a renewed sense of purpose.” – Dalai Lama

Jaw Clenching

If you’re clenching your jaw at night this could be a major factor in why you’re waking up every morning with a headache. The pressure and tension you’re holding in your jaw will mechanically cause tension in the muscles that control blood flow to your brain. Mineral deficiencies and in particular iron dysregulation could be a primary cause of why you’re clenching your jaw at night.

There are devices that can help but those are just band aids, not really solving the problem. I would work on regulating your minerals, particularly iron and then working with a good myofascial therapist that can help stop jaw clenching at night.

“Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast. It is in sleep that we find solace and rejuvenation, healing both the mind and the body.” – William Shakespeare

Diet & Food Allergies

Most people don’t know that food allergies themselves can cause somebody to have headaches. Food allergies can cause ringing in the ears (tinnitus) and many other health conditions. You can get a good food allergy test here that will tell you what foods you’re allergic to or even sensitive to.

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. A good night’s sleep lays the foundation for a day filled with vigor and insight, allowing us to seize opportunities and make wise choices.” – Benjamin Franklin

Overall Stress

Like I mentioned before, overall life stress was a major factor when I was waking up every morning with a headache. The tricky thing about stress is that we hold stress in our nervous system in a remarkable way. Because of the myelin that surrounds nerves in our body, we sometimes cannot “feel” tension. Myelin is made of fat (lipids) and connective tissue (proteins) and it’s designed in “insulate” the nerves so we do not feel the conductive energy flowing through them.

It’s a great design because otherwise we’d over feel every emotion and acute injury much more than we do.

Back when I was doing float therapy I really understood just how much tension and pressure I was living in. If you’re not familiar “floating” is when you lie in a blacked out tank of water that’s the exact temperature of your skin. The float tank has thousands of pounds of magnesium salt in it. You literally float.

It’s called sensory deprivation because all 5 senses (sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch) are eliminated. You can’t do any of them. After about 30 minutes I’d finally relax enough in order to “drift off” but then I’d feel an itch on my shoulder.

The act of moving my arm to scratch that itch, would “stress me out” enough to where it would take another 15 minutes to get back to the level of relaxation I had before.

I thought if simply scratching an itch is “stressful” how much stress are we under daily without knowing it?

Do what you can to remove people, situations, circumstance or relationships from your life that cause unnecessary stress. If you identified 10 stressors and got rid of 5 of them, that’s amazing. Then work on yourself on a spiritual and emotional level to mitigate your reaction to stressful events.

Two books that really helped me with this are Loving What Is and The Four Agreements. They changed my life in this way.

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. But first, allow yourself the rest to dream.” – Harriet Tubman

3 More Considerations

Chiropractic

If you’re still waking up every morning with a headache I would consider going to a good chiropractor to help readjust and align your cervical spine to alleviate tension. Your spine is connected directly to your nervous system. Your nervous system controls just about every biological process, which includes getting headaches.

I’ve seen many people who used to wake up every morning with a headache have them completely go away from doing chiropractic.

Mouth Breathing

Breathing through your mouth at night is not natural or normal. It causes oxidation and a lack of oxygen. CO2 helps regulate oxygen and get more of it by allowing hemoglobin to carry oxygen rich red blood cells to where they need to be.

Mouth breathing also increases oxidative stress by negatively making your blood too acidic. I use this mouth tape when I go to bed at night. If you’re concerned about not being able to breathe you can use these nasal strips which will open up your airways.

Glymphatic System

During the night when you enter deep sleep, the cells in your body expand and contract. This ebb and flow action stimulate the glymphatic system to activate. When this happens, your body will remove excess waste, chemicals, toxins and heavy metals from your brain through the vagus nerve which will then be eliminated by your kidneys or colon.

If your glymphatic system is not working properly your brain could be bioaccumulating heavy metals which reduce mitochondrial ATP production (in complex 4 cytochrome C-oxidase) and cause you to wake up with a headache.

How do you correct this?

Focus on getting deep sleep each night. This process (thank God) happens without you trying. But it only happens when you reach deep sleep. To get more deep sleep read this.

“The power of sleep is an underestimated force in our lives. It offers us the chance to rebuild our energy and rejuvenate our minds, allowing us to approach each day with a clearer perspective and a stronger sense of self.” – Jill Bolte Taylor

Conclusion

If you are still waking up each morning with a headache and you want a pill to fix it, I would consider taking magnesium, vitamin B12, Coenzyme Q-10, Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and Vitamin B6. I’m not really a fan of drugs and pills in as much as natural molecules that our bodies recognized because they’re found in nature.

Work on the underlying cause of why you’re waking up every morning with a headache and have these supplements on hand to deal with the pain until the cause has been removed.

For me the cause was financial stress.

Questions:

1. What’s do you think the cause is for you?
2. What have you tried that has or has not worked?
3. For how long have you tried it?

Comment below!