In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena sprang, fully formed, from her father Zeus’s head. That must have been quite painful for the thunder god. I can sympathize. When I get headaches, they really do feel like someone’s trying to batter their way out of my skull.
It turns out that I, too, can often eject unwelcome invaders. I discovered a technique to get rid of headaches, courtesy of a Colorado-based friend and colleague. My friend, who goes by Robbie Rose, showed me how to cure a headache without using analgesics (painkillers).
Try this the next time your head is pounding, and see if it works.
Ask Your Headache 2 Questions
Maybe the last thing you want to do is pay attention to your aching head when it hurts. But since you’re in pain anyway, you have nothing to lose. Here’s the technique: You ask two questions to your headache. Or, you can have someone else ask you the questions about your headache.
The first question: If your headache were a color, what color would it be?
The second: If your headache had a flavor, what would it taste like?
I know this sounds strange. It is strange. But it works. To wit, I tried it recently on my husband, who is sadly prone to both migraines and painful tension headaches. He said the color of the ache in his head was a green-orange-brown, kind of like an ugly shag carpet from the 1960s. Then he chided me for laughing, since the laughing hurt his head.
We moved on to the second question. This headache of his, he said, had the flavor of peanut butter mixed with sand.
“That sounds disgusting,” I said.
“It is.”
We sat quietly for a moment.
“How does your headache feel now?” I asked.
“Better,” he said. Then he paused for a moment, to check in with his head. “I think it’s gone.”
You can also do this on yourself. Sit quietly and check in with your headache. Ask yourself what color it is and describe the color—you can do this silently or write about it in your journal. Then ask yourself about how the headache tastes.
Even if it doesn’t cure your headache, which I’ve experienced that it can, it’s an interesting thought experiment.
Why Does Naming a Color and Flavor Affect the Pain?
I put this question to my friend Robbie, the one who taught me this technique. Robbie isn’t a health professional, but she is one of the smartest and best-read people I know.
She told me she thinks it works best for tension headaches, which are caused by your neck and scalp muscles tensing up. When your muscles contract in this way, it’s often due to stress, or to a stressful or emotional trigger. Then, because your head is hurting, you feel more stressed or even more emotional as a result of the headache itself. When this happens, Robbie said, it blocks your qi.
In traditional Chinese medicine, qi is your energetic life force, a force that flows throughout your body. It’s often described as the energy your body obtains from food and air.
When your qi is blocked, your energy, libido, and even your decision-making skills suffer.
On the other hand, when your qi is flowing freely, you feel calm, centered, creative, and confident.
“For me, I’m focusing my energy into the places that are hurting, and it somehow relaxes the tension,” Robbie said.
Dr. Cammy Benton, a family physician based near Charlotte, North Carolina, says that directing mindful energy toward pain is often a way to help the body to heal.
“The pain is information,” Benton said, “and if we can stop and pay attention to it and ask ourselves about what it could be, then we can support our bodies’ natural ability to heal.”
When it comes to headaches and other aches and pains, Benton said, natural remedies are always better, more long-lasting, and more health-giving than simply taking drugs.
“Be curious about where this [pain] is coming from,” she said. “It can be as simple as ‘I need to stretch my body because I’ve been looking at the computer too long.’ Then you get up, go for a walk, stretch a little bit, and the pain goes away.”
Benton also said that she advises families in her practice to avoid ever giving their children any acetaminophen-containing products.
Acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol, has been linked to neurological disorders, liver problems, asthma, and even infertility.
Benton also believes that it’s important to drill down to the cause of the headaches—or any other pain—and address it at the root.
“It’s important to find the root cause of the headaches,” she said. “It could be something structural. Or it could be emotional. It could be something toxic in the environment. Just taking a Tylenol just covers up the cause, and it will keep coming back.”
The Root Cause of the Pain in Your Head
My grandfather grew up in a small town on the Russian border with Romania. He emigrated with his family to the United States, living most of his life in New York and then moving to California with my grandmother to be closer to their grandchildren. Grandpa Willy was hale and active his whole life. He ate well, had a sharp mind, and lived to be nearly 90.
He had a different surefire cure for headaches. He believed headaches were caused by constipation and that if you moved your bowels, the pain in your head would go away. Constipation, in turn, is often caused by eating too little fiber, not getting enough exercise, being magnesium deficient, and not drinking enough water.
I used to roll my eyes at this, even as I noticed that drinking a tall glass of water often helped my headache go away. As much as young people, especially teens, want to dismiss the older generation and find their own way, grandparents often know best. Recent research has confirmed that my grandfather was onto something. It isn’t just folk wisdom.
Scientifically speaking, we understand now that there’s a very strong gut-brain connection.
We’ve all had the experience of feeling our stomachs rumble just at the thought of a delectable meal. The enteric nervous system is made up of more than 100 million nerve cells that line the intestinal tract, from the throat to the rectum, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The brain and the stomach are so connected, in fact, that getting a concussion can damage your intestinal health.
“We have the divine ability to heal,” Benton said. “We just need to trust it. The healing is actually within ourselves.”
Chances are, you know the root cause of your aching skull. Maybe it’s stress. Maybe it’s constipation caused by poor dietary habits or dehydration or a lack of exercise (or all three). Maybe you’re carrying extra weight, as I was for several years, that’s putting strain on your body. Or, maybe you’re out of alignment, either physically or spiritually, or both.
Take a deep breath. Drink a tall glass of water or a refreshing brain-boosting green tea. Find a high-quality magnesium supplement, and add more magnesium-rich foods to your diet. Sign up for that meditation class you’ve been meaning to take for months now. Make an appointment for a chiropractic adjustment. (Chiropractic care does wonders for my husband’s headaches, even migraines.) Or get in to see an acupuncturist, whose therapy can also help tremendously.
And then ask yourself about the color and flavor of your aching head. By the time you’ve done all that, your headache will be gone.
Jennifer Margulis is an award-winning science journalist and a regular contributor to The Epoch Times.
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