Kevin,
I have no underlying serious medical conditions. No headache most of my life then suddenly got hit with killer headaches in 2006 that would last days at a time. First one occurred in Libya in 2006 when I was camping in the desert to watch a solar eclipse. It was so bad, I considered staying in bed and skipping the eclipse.
The headaches continued and would last for many days at a time. Very debilitating.
I'm not allergic to pain killers but they had no effect and I dodn't like gulping them down even if I did. Over the years, I realized that my headaches were caused by one of or a combination of
dehydration
neck tension -often caused by sleeping in a bad neck head position
sinus
I've developed a little routine that seems to work.
- Don't lie in bed feeling sorry for myself
- Take a warm-hot shower
- Flush ears with warm water multiple times during shower
- sterile saline flush of nasal passage
- massage and stretch neck muscles
- very deep upper chest breathing - this stretches and flexes the spine and flushes the body with oxygen
- warm sunlight on closed eyelids
- have some caffeine
- pressure point massage along eyebrows, along sinuses tracing line along base of eye sockets and cheek bones, scalp, temples, base of skull behind the ears, and the point of the neck where that muscle joints the skull base.
I love my coffee but restrict myself to 1-2 cups per day otherwise I am susceptible to caffeine addiction and withdrawal as others have mentioned. On the other hand, caffeine dilates the blood vessels in the brain. Greater blood flow, more oxygen, oxygen dulls pain. Combined with the deep breathing gets oxygen into the brain. Ambulance officers give injured people 35% oxygen via a hudson mask (different to a rescus mask) as an analgesic to ease pain.
I tried many different pillow types until I found some that were really comfortable.
I've mostly licked it. Haven't had much of a problem last couple of years but on the rare occasions when I do this procedure is my first line of attack.
I know there are 11000 members of IIS but I think the number of active posters is much less. The number of people who have contributed to this thread makes me think these sort of headaches affect a large % of the population.
Best of luck
Joe