USA: Easy — and natural — ways to ease headache pain

. BOSTON, MA (Harvard HEALTHbeat), November 4, 2008 Headaches are familiar to nearly everyone: in any given year, almost 90% of men and 95% of women have at least one. In the vast majority of cases, however, the pain isn’t an omen of some terrible disease but instead a response to the realities of life: stress, fatigue, exposure to allergens, and lack of sleep. While medications are the backbone of headache and migraine treatment, other approaches may reduce the frequency, intensity, or duration of your headaches. Even if these techniques don’t provide complete relief, they may enable you to cut back on your medications. However, you may also want to discuss each technique with your doctor ahead of time. Avoiding triggers This approach is simple, risk-free, and costs nothing. The first step is to figure out whether there’s a connection between your headaches and particular foods, activities, or situations. Few triggers are obvious, so a headache diary is a good tool to use when trying to figure this out. If you do find that certain foods or beverages bring on your headache, make it a priority to avoid these triggers. For example, people with cluster headache usually find that they need to give up alcohol during periods when their headaches are active. Wearing sunglasses can be effective if exposure to sunlight precipitates your headaches. Or, if changes in eating and sleeping habits are likely to set off a headache, make an extra effort to maintain a regular schedule. ___________________________________________ A note on caffeine and headaches Some people find that simply drinking a caffeinated beverage can ease their migraine headache. This is because caffeine causes blood vessels to narrow, and the pain of a migraine headache is caused by the expansion of blood vessels. Therefore, caffeine offers relief by counteracting the vasodilation. ___________________________________________ Physical therapy By relaxing the tense muscles that commonly accompany tension and migraine headaches, certain types of physical therapy may provide relief. Your physical therapist may teach you daily neck and shoulder exercises you can do on your own or use devices and techniques aimed at relaxing muscles. Physical therapists often use hot or cold compresses. You can try the same techniques at home. A heating pad applied daily, for example, can relax tense muscles in your neck and shoulders and help prevent headaches. Taking a hot shower or bath can also help. A cold pack can constrict blood vessels and ease the pain of a headache already in progress, and it can be especially helpful for throbbing temples. Massage, when performed by a licensed massage therapist, can loosen tight muscles. ___________________________________________ A prescription for stress relief You can’t eliminate stress from your life, but a few tried-and-true coping techniques may help prevent headaches or ease them once they begin. * Exercise. Aerobic exercise alleviates stress and can boost your mood. Aim to work 30 minutes of moderate activity, such as brisk walking, into your schedule on all or most days. * Get enough sleep. Most people need seven to eight hours of sleep a night. If you’re finding it hard to fall or stay asleep, you may want to examine your waking hours. Strategies such as exercising, avoiding caffeine in the afternoon, limiting fluids before bedtime, and not watching TV in bed can improve sleep. If you still have trouble sleeping, consider consulting a sleep specialist. * Learn relaxation techniques. Treat yourself to a massage. Try meditation, yoga, or deep breathing. * Confront stressful situations head-on. Don’t let stressful situations fester. Use negotiation skills at work, and hold family problem-solving sessions at home. Don’t wait until the end of the day or week to confront a problem. * Improve your time-management skills. These techniques can help you juggle work and family demands and ease your stress levels. A number of techniques are available to relax your muscles and ease tension, which should help reduce headache pain. No single technique is better than the others, so it’s best to experiment until you find the approach that works for you. However, whatever you choose, the technique will work only if you do it on a regular basis, preferably daily. _____________________________________________ Relaxation techniques Options include these: * deep diaphragmatic breathing, which involves breathing so that your abdomen (rather than your chest) expands with each breath * meditation, a process of turning the attention inward rather than being distracted by outside events * visualization, in which you imagine a peaceful scene that relaxes you. FEATURED CONTENT: * Evaluating your headache * First steps in treatment * Tension headache * Migraine headache * Chronic daily headache * Cluster headache * Sinus headache * Self-help and alternative techniques to ease headaches Reprinted from Headaches: Relieving and preventing migraine and other headaches Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School, Copyright © 2008 by Harvard University.