A Plinky writing prompt from earlier this week: "Share how you treat a headache."
As you can tell from numerous posts here, I get a lot of headaches, for all different reasons. If it has the potential to cause a headache, you can bet that for me, it will. Allergies, stress, fluorescent lights, heat, cold, loud dogs barking, eye strain, sudden weather changes, thinking about time travel, hunger, thirst, sleeping in too late... you name it. How I treat them often depends on what's causing them in the first place. Sometimes it's obvious, other times not so much, and other times I just instinctively know what's going to make me feel better.
My first line of defense is a dose of painkillers, and my drug of choice is Excedrin. Excedrin is a combination of aspirin and acetaminophen with a bit of caffeine to boost its speed and effectiveness, and it's the only thing that seems to work for me. Either of these drugs alone has very little effect, and I have an intolerance to ibuprofen (i.e. it makes me vomit). Naproxen (Aleve) also has no effect on my headaches, though I do use it for joint and muscle pain.
Sometimes, though, drugs alone are not enough. And sometimes I get a lot of headaches in a short period, and I dislike taking the painkillers several days in a row. So I keep a few other tricks up my sleeve.
Cold Therapy: I keep a soft freezer pack frozen at all times at home, and I carry one-time use instant cold packs in my purse (activated by squeezing to pop the water pouch inside, setting off a chemical reaction). Sometimes I apply the cold compress directly where it hurts, sometimes to the opposite side of my head, sometimes the back of my neck. It all depends on what feels like it's helping. Most of the time just a few minutes of this will numb the pain enough to let the drugs do the rest.
Vapor Therapy: Often I can tell that a headache is caused by sinus congestion. This happens in one of two ways: either excessive pressure in my sinuses causes pain directly, or reduced airflow causes a sort of oxygen deprivation headache. Either way, menthol and eucalyptus vapors can help a lot. At both home and work I have a small waterless vaporizer which works by heating up a replaceable pad soaked with these oils.
Food: Sometimes I get hunger or low blood sugar headaches. The obvious cure for these is to eat! Sugary snacks, especially chocolate, usually help the most, but sometimes I'll crave something specific. I just listen to whatever my body is telling me, and it's usually right.
Drink: Headaches caused by dehydration are usually helped by downing a couple of glasses of water in a short period of time. Not too much too fast, though; I don't want to end up with water intoxication. Vascular headaches, those caused by expanded blood vessels supplying too much blood to the brain, sometimes need a little more caffeine than what's in the Excedrin, so I'll drink a Coke Zero. This depends on the time of day and how much caffeine I've already had, though, as my heart does not tolerate high amounts of it as well as it used to.
Sensory Deprivation: When all of the above fails, there's nothing left to do but lock myself in the darkest, quietest room I can find, and wait it out. If I can relax enough to fall asleep, most of the time I'll be good as new when I wake up again.
Again, I don't have any scientific method of identifying what type of headache I have; it's just something I know. And I don't necessarily get it right 100% of the time.
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