Often appearing later in the day, tension headaches aren’t the most painful kind of headache — just the most common. And they’re still no fun, often feeling as if a tight band is wound around your head, creating pain and pressure all around your head and tenderness in the scalp, neck, and shoulders. For people who suffer from regular tension headaches, Harvard Health has some advice:
- Pay attention to the basics. Get enough sleep, don’t skip meals, and be sure to pace yourself to avoid stress and fatigue.
- Relaxation techniques. Physical approaches include applying a heating pad to your neck and shoulders to relax the muscles. Exercising these muscles also helps. Guided imagery exercises that help you focus your attention on various parts of your body can also help.
- Biofeedback. A therapist attaches electrodes to your skin to detect electrical signals from your neck and shoulder muscles. You then learn to recognize when you are becoming tense and practice ways to relax the muscles before they tighten so much.
- Medical approaches. Some people with tension headaches have very sensitive areas, known as trigger points, at the back of the neck or in the shoulders. Injecting a local anesthetic into these areas may eliminate the pain and prevent the headache from occurring again. There are also a number of medications that can help keep tension headaches at bay.
If the first three tips don’t get you anywhere, talk to your doctor right away about medical next steps.