Okay I’m currently furious that migraines are often so blindly easy to treat and I had to find this out myself at the age of 26 when I’ve been to a neurologist since I was 11 lol so I’m about to teach you two neat and fast little tricks to deal with pain!
The first is the sternocleidomastoid muscle, or the SCM muscle.
This big red section is responsible for pain around the eye, cheekbone, and jaw, as well as some temple pain. Literally all you have to do is angle your head down a little, angle it away from the side that hurts, and then you can gently pinch and rub that muscle. I find it best to start at the bottom and travel upwards. The relief is so immediate! You can increase pressure as you feel comfortable doing so.
Here is a short and easy video showing this in action
The second is a fast and easy stretch that soothes your vagus nerve, which is the nerve responsible for calming you down. The vagus nerve, for those unfamiliar, is stimulated by deep breathing such as yawning, sighing, singing, or taking a deep breath to calm your anger in a tense situation.
You can stretch this out by sitting up as straight as possible (this does not have to be perfect to work) and interlacing your fingers. Put your hands on the back of your head with your thumbs going down the sides of your neck and, while keeping your face forward, look all the way to one side with just your eyes. Hold that until you feel the urge to breathe deeply or yawn, or until you can tell there’s a change. Then do the same thing on the other side. When you put your arms down, you should clearly be able to turn your head farther in both directions. If the first session doesn’t get rid of your migraine, rest and repeat as many times as necessary. I even get a little fancy with it and roll my eyes up and down along the outer edge sometimes to stretch as much as I can.
If you need a visual here’s a good video on it. I know some of the language they use seems questionable but this is real and simple science and should not be discarded because it’s been adopted by the trendy wellness crowd!
I seriously cannot believe I didn’t hear a word of this from any doctor in my life. Additionally, if you get frequent recurring migraines, you may want to see a dietician. Migraines can be caused by foods containing histamines, lectin, etc. and can also be caused by high blood pressure in specific situations such as exercise, stress, and even sex.
If any of this information helps you I’d love to hear it btw! It’s so so fast and easy to do. Good luck!
*currently suffering from a horrible migraine. Tries this*
Are you fucking shitting me it works!?
What. The fuck.
@thebibliosphere here might be the cause of some of your migraines!
It is, actually! My sternocleidomastoid was one of the muscles that tore badly after my chiropractic injury. Rehab is slow going.
Thank you so much for this @thebibliosphere
Thank the op! And also just because some people are being a bit unkind in the notes and telling people that if this works for you, you don’t have migraines you have tension headaches:
Cervicogenic headaches are a thing and are just as debilitating and are not just simple tension headaches and are often sometimes lumped under the umbrella of migraine disorder.
They are caused by muscle dysfunction and damage to the nerves in the neck/base of the skull and they often represent as typical migraines in terms of pain intensity, pain pathways and also the longevity of the attacks. They can also cause nausea, vomiting and a whole host of other symptoms that are typically treated with migraines targeted drugs.
They can also become chronic or episodic depending on the cause and also result in the development of other chronic pain and neurological disorders such as occipital neuralgia which can also feel like a migraine and often trigger the brain into experiencing the exact same symptoms due to following the occipital pathway which is the most common representation and cause of migraine pain and other symptoms.
You’re migraines might not be caused by muscle dysfunction, but for a lot of people it is a contributing factor or even a symptom of migraine itself as migraines can cause the muscles in the neck to tense up in response to the misfires going on in the brain during an attack, leading to other problems like the above mentioned.
My occipital neuralgia was likely caused by many facets of my neck injury, but my neurologist and pain specialist both agree my migraines going from episodic to chronic was also a part in it because of how my body tenses up during migraines. The migraine aggravates my neck injury, which then causes the muscles around my skull to crunch the occipital nerve, leading to occipital neuralgia which now causes me to have daily migraines if I can’t get my neck to give up the death grip it has on my skull.
Sometimes I can do this with stretches and massage which can lessen the pain. Other times I’m in the ER getting shot full of IV anti-seizure meds because it’s the only thing that calms down the migraine which in turn stops the muscle spasms.
Migraines are a complex neurological disorder that represents differently across the spectrum of sufferers. Hell, some people don’t experience pain at all with their migraines. It’s a weird fucking disease.
I understand the desire to emphasize how much worse migraines are than normal headaches that respond to hydration and pain killers. Believe me. I’m one more “have you tried drinking water?” away from going on a justified murder spree. But we also don’t get to look at stuff like the above and say “well that’s not a migraine” when yeah, actually, it can be.
There’s a reason neurologists will often try sending patients to physical therapy for severe migraines. And it’s because the sternocleidomastoid is a cunt and that cunt being fucked up can make migraines worse.
Yeah, maybe some of the people in notes just have tension headaches. Or maybe some of them have got fucked up neck muscles from their migraines and learning how the neck is involved in migraine management might be helpful for some. Is it going to help everyone? No. Does that mean it’s not a relevant thing to discuss in context of migraine disease? Also no.
