Muscular Tension Headaches

[Funbrunette]

I get them once in a while and it's hell! I feel your pain...I tried relaxing methods, balms and the only thing that seems to work is the pills... My doctor told me stress is the culprit! Well what do you do?!? Life is stressful so I figured I'd pack up a few bathing suits sell my house, my car and go braid hair on the beaches in mexico (how stressful can that be? lol) Care to join me?

[MorganGrayson]

My doctor took the approach much more like Jim's wife's doctor. "Tension headache" is literal. It isn't "tension" as in "anxiety," it's "tension" as in "tightness." The way I think of it when it happens to me is "my head is on too tight." It can come from injury, posture...the ever popular "of course you've hurt yourself if you spend that much time on the computer!" (My own personal favorite.) I had real splitters, agonizing headaches, until my yearly optometrist visit came around and my eye doctor said "you do WHAT for a living? People who wear bifocals can't use a computer!!!!" And thusly my "computer glasses" came into being. (I can see clearly exactly 27 inches away from the bridge of my nose in those things. No closer, no farther. But...the headaches stopped.) I had been attempting to maneuver my head into the oddest positions to see the monitor without realizing it.

[gigi]

I get both tension headaches and migraines...I can sooo relate!

I'm one of the lucky ones that can use Tylenol and within 20 minutes the pain is gone....but, this is just a band-aid really...it disguises the pain, but the muscle tension is still there.

I do use some relaxation techniques, but one thing that I really try to work on is my posture when I'm on the computer. I can't count how many times I all of a sudden realize that I have my shoulders covering my ears...haha. Everytime I notice, I push my shoulders downward...this has made my tension headaches dissipate in numbers.

Migraines are another thing all together....although I'm lucky with those too because most of the time I get the 'aura of a migraine' first (bright spot in my eyes that gets larger over 20 minutes or so) before the actual pain comes on and I take a tylenol right away...wait until the aura is gone so I can see again, and then I'm good to go.

If you don't want to do the meds thing...find a good relaxation technique you can do easily and quickly and stick to it for a while...or maybe some aromatherapy....try a mix of lavender and peppermint and rub it into your forehead, temples, neck and shoulders....