The Health Guru Chick
May 9, 2020
Updated: Feb 18, 2021
I just want to share my experience about occipital headache (tension headache) I had for at least 20 years.
I tried many things and saw several healthcare professionals, nothing worked.
At the beginning, it was once to twice a month.
About 5 years ago, it went really bad: once to twice sometimes three times as week.
Symptoms:
. Tension always starts on the left side for me, sometimes bilateral, but mostly on the left side
. Tension starts at the back of the neck, mild first then increases during the day
. The tension spreads slowly to the entire back of the head, on the shoulder and the jaw
. Any head movement makes it worst. Increased sensitivity to smell, light and noise
. Fatigue
Releasing factors:
. Ibuprofen 200 to 400mg up to twice a day and ideally lying for 30mn in the dark after taking ibuprofen
I remember this day where headache started before my personal training session with my client. It was really bad and of course it was the day where I didn’t have any ibuprofen with me.
This only thing I had in my bag was a ball that I use when I have to do some mobility work with clients.
Pain was so uncomfortable that I took the ball and start to roll on it.
The tension was at the base of the skull, where the neck meets the occipital bone.
It felt like a good massage but not effective enough to let my pain go away.
Then I though that the cause of the pain could be somewhere else.
I placed the ball along my upper traps. It was again a nice massage but nothing strong enough to release my tensions.
Then I went in between my shoulder blades, on the same side as my tensions.
I got a shooting pain in my head, and the more I was lying on the ball, the more my headache was increasing. I had a couple of movements to that (see video), it was excruciating, but after a couple of minutes, tension decreased.
My client arrived, she was 10 mn late, I wasn’t great to start her personal training session but wasn’t as bad as before and I was able to function.
20 minutes after, my tension headache was completely gone.
It was fascinating, years of pain suddenly gone.
I repeated this routine a few times for a month.
Headache decreased from 2-3/week to 1/week during the first 3 weeks.
After that, it decreased again to 1/month, then disappeared completely for a 3-4 months.
It’s been 5 years now and I am mostly pain free. I really can’t recall when was the last one.
Since I study osteopathy, I know there is no magic recipe to cure a pathology. The causes of tension headaches can result from neck injury, accumulation of tensions, musculoskeletal dysfunction... So I want to stay humble in this post, and I am just sharing what was my experience and what worked for me. I hope it will help some of you.
Kathy Babolat
Rehab & Strength Personal Trainer London
#Rehab, #Neck, #TensionHeadache, #Occipitalheadache, #NeckPain, #TensionheadachRelease, #KathyBabolat, #PersonalTrainerLondon