8 ways to relieve a headache without pills

How to get rid of a headache with­out pills? But is it pos­si­ble at all?

When we have a headache, we are used to sigh­ing and reach­ing for a painkiller. But it also hap­pens that the headache comes unex­pect­ed­ly. There is no pill at hand, and the pain is just excru­ci­at­ing. And what to do? Let’s try sev­er­al ways to alle­vi­ate this ter­ri­ble con­di­tion.

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1. Acupuncture

Stud­ies have shown that acupunc­ture helps pre­vent and reduce the fre­quen­cy of headaches. But you should be atten­tive and care­ful: choose an acupunc­ture spe­cial­ist seri­ous­ly and make sure that the nee­dles are ster­il­ized.

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2. Massage or self-massage

Sci­en­tists have proven that peo­ple with fre­quent migraines and headaches need to take a mas­sage course from time to time. Accord­ing to this study, migraine suf­fer­ers who had a six-week course of mas­sage (1 ses­sion per week) had sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er headaches and slept bet­ter.

The fol­low­ing mas­sage will help tem­porar­i­ly relieve the headache: rub the tem­ples and slow­ly mas­sage the neck, back, head, and shoul­ders. Or ask some­one to do it.

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3. Stretching

A headache can occur due to ten­sion in the mus­cles of the neck and back. That is why it is worth adding more stretch­ing exer­cis­es to your dai­ly work­out.

Exer­cis­es for headache:

• Tilt your chin for­ward and up, then toward each shoul­der.
• Slow­ly shrug your shoul­ders: up and down, and then up and for­ward, up and back.

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4. Meditation

Headaches can occur due to stress and stren­u­ous work. To reduce stress, you should try such relax­ing tech­niques as med­i­ta­tion. Med­i­ta­tion helps to increase cre­ativ­i­ty, relax after a hard day at work, and even allow you to fall asleep bet­ter and feel less anx­ious.

Test­ed on myself! I start­ed prac­tic­ing med­i­ta­tion from the mid­dle of the first quar­an­tine. At first, five min­utes a day after work to sep­a­rate per­son­al and work time dur­ing self-iso­la­tion. Then I increased the time to ten min­utes. Now I med­i­tate for half an hour a day: fif­teen min­utes in the morn­ing and fif­teen in the evening. The lev­el of stress and anx­i­ety has decreased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, I have become able to fall asleep bet­ter, and headaches real­ly rarely both­er me.

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5. Yoga

Yoga class­es act as med­i­ta­tion and stretch­ing at once, as they include breath­ing exer­cis­es, and med­i­ta­tion, and exer­cise. In the com­plex, yoga allows you to keep your­self in shape, as well as to relax. There­fore, headaches due to stress and anx­i­ety will both­er you less if you start doing yoga.

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6. Exercises for relaxation

Headaches due to anx­i­ety and stress are real­i­ties that most of us have faced since the start of quar­an­tines and the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. That is why psy­chol­o­gists advise to reduce the lev­el of anx­i­ety with the help of spe­cial exer­cis­es. For exam­ple, deep breath­ing, lis­ten­ing to pleas­ant music, visu­al­iza­tion, and so on.

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7. Proper nutrition

A large amount of nitrates and nitrites in the diet can also cause this dis­ease. To reduce the num­ber of headache episodes, you need to use prod­ucts from this list as rarely as pos­si­ble:

• alco­hol;
• caf­feine;
• choco­late and cheese;
• nuts and some legumes (for exam­ple, soy);
• sausages;
• sweets and sug­ar.

Do not for­get about the course of group B vit­a­mins.

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8. Heat and cold

This method of reduc­ing headaches can be used even dur­ing preg­nan­cy, as it requires noth­ing more than a warm or cold com­press.

If the headache is accom­pa­nied by heav­i­ness, a feel­ing of stiff­ness in the skin, you need to apply some­thing warm to the back of it. And if the pain is throb­bing, use cold — apply some­thing cold to the tem­ples.

And what ways to get rid of a headache do you know?

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