Lots of people suffer from stress headaches–at least once in a while–but some people get them all the time. A headache can spoil your day and make it hard to concentrate on what you want to do. You have lots of options for treating your stress headaches but if they happen frequently, you need to pay a visit to your doctor. Most of the time, however, small changes in your daily habits and home remedies can be good enough to get rid of a tension headache.
Aspirin (or another medication you can buy over the counter) is the most common way to treat a stress headache. Depending on the type of headache you have and how bad it is, some medications will work better than others. Unfortunately, “rebound headaches” are a common side effect of these medications. This occurs when the effects of the medication wear off and the headache comes back. This is why you should not take more than the recommended dose of any medication that you want to use for your headache without first asking a doctor whether or not the dose is sufficient. A fast headache cure is a cold glass of a caffeinated beverage such as iced coffee or tea. Both the cold temperature of the drink and caffeine within it are good for reducing the size of the blood vessels that are causing your tension headache. This is a dicey cure because if you use it a lot you’ll develop a dependency upon the caffeine which can bring on headaches later when you fail to get your “fix.” So if you are having bad tension headaches, cold caffeinated beverages might help but you also need to think about lowering your stress levels and the other factors that might be causing your headaches.
Giving yourself a foot bath in hot water is also a great way to counteract the effects of a stress headache. You can use your regular bath for this or a bucket or one of the foot bath spas that are made specifically for this which are usually easy to find in the pharmacy or on the internet. This is a fantastic treatment to do right before going to bed. If you buy your own foot spa you’ll be free to set it to your own comfort level but you need to remember to use water that is hot but not scalding. Keep your feet in the hot water for ten or fifteen minutes. This is not only good for your feet, but it relaxes your whole body and may prevent or cure your stress headaches too. In conclusion, lots of people suffer from stress headaches and these headaches have a bunch of different causes like lack of sleep, too much caffeine or booze, etc. You need to be able to properly identify the source of your headaches and address them, even when it means making changes that you might find inconvenient. You don’t want to have to live with headaches all the time so make sure that you do what you can to make them stop.
