I get headaches that are totally debilitating. For the last several years they’ve been the type that start as perceptible, but not painful, upon waking. I often feel overheated, puffy, thirsty when I wake up and my forehead has just enough of a headache that I know if I don’t act fast this thing is gonna get worse and worse throughout the day. And the last thing I want is debilitating pain when I’m stuck at work, far away from the controlled environment that is my home.
Fortunately, there was a period of a few weeks one winter when I was living in Toronto where I had no hot water. I’m a clean guy so I had to learn how to bear the cold water in my shower. Either that or insist that my landlord fix the situation but I didn’t want to put the guy out. It worked out great because this ended up being the single most important factor in beating these morning-onset headaches – extremely cold water. But I augment it with a few other things – here’s my winning recipe for beating this type of headache:
1) Keep a 1000 pack of ibuprofen by the bed so when you wake up with a headache you can pop 3. The container recommends 2 so obviously 3 won’t kill you. Down them with plenty of water (people are always like “water is so important to drink a lot of” and for headaches sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t but it can’t hurt).
2) KEY STEP: Go to the shower and turn it on cold only. Put just your head under the stream, water hitting the back of your head until it starts to hurt. Then fully step into the stream and lift up your head, cold water now hitting your forehead and face. Continue until this part of your head starts hurting at which point you step back a bit and proceed to rinse the rest of your body. Depending on the severity of the headache, you’ll want to keep putting your head under the freezing cold water until you can’t take it anymore. Then shampoo and focus on cooling off the rest of your body. It’s a common misconception the you only have to worry about cooling off your head but this is because most people forget that their head is connected to their body. Inside your neck are arteries and veins that can route warm blood from your body into you head. Don’t let this happen. After shampooing douse your head some more. The more the better. Stand under the stream, letting it pour down your body. When you do this it is very hard to breathe normally, without gasping. In the winter, when the water can be really cold, you’ll notice your extremities actually begin to hurt a bit. This is good.
Turn on coffee machine in preparation for step 4 (always have coffee in the house)
3) Go have breakfast. I always have a bowl of some organic cereal with blueberries on it but this is just me. Just put something good in your stomach.
At this point the ibuprofen is kicking in. Your body is happy to have the food. And you’re still friggin freezing, even spastically jerking as you raise spoonfuls of cereal to your mouth (eat over the bowl). Everything is converging on anihilating the headache…but there’s one more critical step.
4) Have a strong coffee. Have it in a small volume and consume it rather quickly (e.g. within 5min). Downing it gives you those vasoconstrictive effects of a high dose of caffeine that you won’t get if you sip it ever so slowly. Plus this is all about steps 1-4 converging towards headache anhiliation – don’t waste the window of opportunity.
I have a double espresso with nearly equal parts 18% cream (not required) and sometimes it tastes great so I make another (more anhiliation).
At this point you’re basically done but you can still embellish. What if you’re just on the verge of beating it? Wanna few extra pointers, just to be safe?
Pro bonus tips: Drink a good glass of dilute orange juice before leaving for work/class/whatever. Driving to work? Put the air on cold or open the window a bit if it’s winter. Don’t zip up your jacket.Don’t wear long sleeves. Pin your hair up so your head can breathe. Basically, stay cold. You should be feeling the effects of the shower long after (e.g. 30min later my toes are often numb, I’m shivering). Also, before falling asleep, you can increase the liklihood that you’ll wake up cold – e.g. fewer sheets, thermostat as low as you (or your co-habitants) can withstand.
Final thoughts: When you’re done the shower you shouldn’t feel the headache any more and, if you did it right, it won’t come back. So getting out of the shower, cold as you are, you can be feeling pretty great. Plus it’s damn invigorating and you certainly are not tired. However, this doesn’t always work. Plus there are probably hundreds of different reasons why people get headaches and therefore hundreds of different solutions. Sometimes the headache is too bad upon waking for anything to kill it but often it’s surprisingly bad and I still conquer it (those are the moments when I think “damn I gotta write about this – this is amazing!”). Lastly, the excessive amount of extremely cold water is very hard to take, but it works. It’s not going to kill you so, if you can’t take it, I guess your headache is just not thaaat bad.
I wrote this because there are a million other ideas out there about how to cure headaches but I’ve never heard this one before, and it’s pretty much my only remedy. I’m super curious if it will be of use to anyone else out there.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
First off, I know *exactly* how you feel.
I get these morning headaches often and have found similar methods to knock them out. I actually have one this morning as I write this and dealing with it while “stuck at work”. For the last hour or so, I’ve been looking for a way to escape and get a bag of ice or something cold to settle this thing down. Uggg, I hate this…(but then, thankfully, stumbled onto your blog!)
I’m curious now on finding out more information on how to prevent them all together.
From my experiences, they tend to occur if I was very physically active the previous day and likely didn’t get enough water to drink and/or got too much sun. I don’t have a great thirst response and find that I sometimes get less thirsty after a certain point of long-term exercise. Not good. (Yesterday, I was hiking about the city carrying my 3 year old on my shoulders (35lbs) for a few hours. Nothing exceptionally strenuous at the time and I didn’t have a headache then, but I tend to always feel it the NEXT morning with a headache like this.)
Some clues to this possible dehydration you kind of touched on when you mentioned feeling “overheated, puffy, thirsty” when awaking. I have the same symptoms when my headaches hit. I also have a bit of nausea, slight balance issues, eye ache/pain/pressure, tightness at the base of the skull, and sensitivity to light. Some of these symptoms are similar to migraines, but I think these are really tension headaches. What’s odd is that you would think that drinking water would help, but often it doesn’t(at least not initially) and it feels leaching to me. Maybe it’s a salt imbalance or other electrolyte issue?
For me, it feels like the headache is a “block” to allowing my body to eat and drink. Once the headache is knocked out, I’m usually very ravenous and thirsty and my body will accept these things without penality. However, if I am to eat or drink while having the headache, it will only make it worse; usually MUCH worse to the point where the whole day might be shot. It’s interesting that your four steps tend to imply this logic since you battle the headache first, then go on to drinking coffee, eating breakfast, etc. I have hypoglycemic tendencies, so it’s easy for me to feel like I’ve “skipped a meal” if my exertion levels are higher than normal.
A few things that have helped me are very similar to your recommendations:
1. Ibuprofen is the miracle drug for these headaches, but I have some digestive issues (IBS, Leaky Gut) and they recommend to not take them as it makes these conditions worse. So, I used to take like 3 or 4 as you suggested, but now I just take 1 or 2 to take the edge off and find other ways to combat the headache. I find that Tylenol, Aleve, Asprin do nothing for my headaches.
2. Ok, the cold water trick. Yes, I used to dunk my whole head in the sink or under the bath spigot with cold water blasting. Instant relief and I often find my nausea would often turn into extreme hunger(blood sugar issue?). Sometimes I find it better to keep the head cold and the body warm, but will be trying your all-cold water technique to see if I find any improvement. (Maybe I’ve just been too much of a wimp to try full-on cold water, but it sounds like you got great results from it, so certainly worth trying.)
For a really bad one, I find that alternating cold and warm(not too hot) in the shower would help loosen up the tension a bit, especially in the neck and shoulders. Also, cold packs/cold damp towel on the back of the head or neck really helps while working through it, or just to keep it down.
If my eye pain, nausea, light sensitivity is bad, then I find lying down for about 15-30 minutes with an ice pack on the back of the head/neck and one on the top of the forehead covering the eyes(to also block out the light) can help.
3. After the cold therapy, and once the nausea subsides, I usually feel very hungry, but I tend to crave certain foods. Anything cold that is high in protein with fat, sugar or salt. Here are some staples for me:
* Coffee Ice Cream – The coldness, with the caffeine and the ibuprofen are all working hard to knock this thing out. Make sure the coffee ice cream is made from espresso or it may not be too effective. Good second choice is a Starbuck Frappicino.
* Cottage Cheese – Again, the protein with some fat and salt seems to help. (cottage cheese is high in sodium and I even like it with some soy sauce(more salt); try it, you might be surprised how good it is)
4. I can’t do crazy amounts of strong coffee since it wires me up too much, but agree that it helps a lot. I like the colder alternatives in coffee icecream or a Frappicino as they have just enough caffeine to be effective for me.
5. Drink water(rehydrate), but slowly. I find that rebuilding my fluids helps, but do it slowly as I suspect my electrolytes are off and need rebalancing. I find that trying to fix too many things at once can make it worse. Maybe something like gatorade is better initally, but I haven’t really tried it specifically to know if it’s better or not than just plain water.
Final thoughts
——————
I agree with all your tips on staying cold and avoiding things that make you hot. They help a lot.
So, what does this all mean? From my experiences, there is certainly an element of over-exertion to these headaches:
* dehydration (imbalance with salts, water that effect blood pressure?)
* possible mild heat exhaustion or heat-stroke. See: http://www.medicinenet.com/heat_exhaustion/article.htm
* Low blood sugar (nausea that turns to hunger when headache is fixed)
* Lack of protein/fat (cravings for rich dairy)
I’m curious now if we can “fix” these headaches before they happen. If we took the cold shower the night before and made better efforts to rehydrate/salts, would that help? I notice that when I have over-exerted myself, I tend to feel slightly hot and flushed (with no headache) the night before. Maybe that is the sign that I’m already dehydrated and the headache is coming…
Great discussion, I’d love to learn more!
Holy crap! This is the best comment I’ve ever seen!
I agree there’s something there in terms of getting “secretly” dehydrated the day before. You never notice it until it’s too late (i.e. the next day when you have the headache or when going to bed, suddenly realizing and trying to guzzle as much water as possible).
I totally agree with the food/water paradox – that it can be important prior to getting the headache (important to stay hydrated, avoiding potential trigger foods), doesn’t really help once you have the headache (or can even exacerbate) and, once the headache’s over, hunger comes on as if you’re trying to make up for what you haven’t really been able to eat while the headache was present. Interestingly, I fast once a year from sunrise to sunset for many days in a row. Originally I thought this would give me headaches but I actually rarely get them during the fasting period. And so I do think it depends on *what* I eat and so I avoid certain foods but I have a feeling that, for me, artificial flavors/colors/MSG/chemicals are best to avoid. I think David Buchholz’s book (http://amzn.to/9Ay6Pn) on diet and headaches is worth checking out.
Agree that ibuprofen but not the other drugs seems to work best.
I will definitely keep protein in mind as I recover from my headaches. I also usually add a bit of juice to my water to try to make it isosmotic with my body fluids…but I have no good evidence that this is better.
Sad thing is the weather is now warming up and the tap water isn’t as cold anymore! Time to (unfortunately) crank the AC! Also, we have a baby on the way and my wife is always speculating with a bit of a grin how I’m going to be totally incapacitated by headaches once it’s born, unable to do my share of chores and duties. We will see!