Cindy is sitting in her room relaxing and doing homework on her computer, she's been doing so for a couple of hours. She starts to notice her head hurting.

Cindy goes down to the kitchen to ask her mom about her pain.

Mom, why does my head hurt?

Aw Cindy, you have what's called a tension headache

How do we get tension headaches?

When we look at screens for a long time, or we gaze with our eyesight at a certain point in space for a longtime, that creates a lot of tension.

That's a great question Cindy! We get tension headaches when our muscles in our neck and face area are semi-contracted for long periods of time.

The tension created in the facial and neck muscles causes pain in the brain. That's why we feel pain in our head, and thus we feel a headache.

So, in all, headaches aren’t caused by actual pain in the head. It is just our body's response to us overusing face and neck muscles which our brain feels as a headache.

So what can I do to feel better?

For the pain, I can give you some Tylenol. Tylenol works because it stops chemicals in the brain that cause pain which helps reduce your headaches.

But, although it helps you feel better you shouldn't take Tylenol all the time, because it can damage your liver and kidney if taken too often

Thanks so much mom!