Great. Not only am I frequently in blinding agony, turns out it’s a feminine problem.
Well, to hell with you all. My headaches are EXTREMELY MASCULINE. These are some bold, manly headaches, let me tell you. Chunks of my skull wrench loose with explosive force and embed themselves in the wall, and I just slap em back on with duct tape. Sometimes I gouge the backs of my eye sockets open with a Phillips head screwdriver just to relieve the pressure. My retinas pulse with such electric surges of force that I can see my own Y chromosomes, and they are extremely active and dynamic, I can assure you. Sometimes just contemplating the raw masculinity of my headaches gives me the vapors, and I have to find someplace soft to lie down for a while.
I get something similar. If I eat something sugary and it’s hot, either inside due to the heater on in winter, or because of summery humidity, I tend to get a relatively intense headache.
I don’t get migraines or really bad pain, but it does pound a little sometimes.
I think I’m an average sufferer, neither excessively high and painful, nor low.
Only as associated with a hangover, and it has to be a very bad hangover that involved something sweet like wine. Red Wine gives the worst hangovers IMHO. That’s why I won’t get drunk on it. Good Tequila on the other hand…
I don’t get headaches either, or at least I can’t remember the last time. I don’t have any aspirin or analgesics of any kind in my apartment. In fact (veering slightly off topic) I don’t have any medication, pills or tablets of any kind. It’s like the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t exist. (I have a good First Aid kit, but that’s all, and it’s never used… so far).
With regard to headache tablets and so on, I know that to say, “If you buy them, you’ll need them, but if you don’t, you won’t” doesn’t make one bit of rational sense. But I think there may be a grain of truth in there somewhere.
Maybe, to some limited extent, people get into the ‘Problem? Take a tablet!’ mentality or culture, and begin to bring about their own habitual use or even mild dependency. Maybe if the pills/tablets weren’t handily available, they would either find they could get by perfectly well without them, and/or would find alternatives (I find that if I even begin to feel stressed about something, playing my guitar for five minutes takes it all away). But I am not a qualified expert, and this is just idle conjecture.
I’m very interested in people’s comments on any possible link between headaches or other recurring, mild problems and caffeine. I’ve more or less given up on caffeine altogether (aside from the occasional cola drink), and in my own case I think it’s done me a lot of good.
with due respect, it seems most of the respondents don’t quite get the idea. but i do. i’ve never ever had a headache. not, oh they were few and far between or oh, they were light : they did not occur. ever. not one. i mean, i clearly CAN’T have them, since (trust me) i’ve given my head plenty of cause to ache in my 57 years
and yeah, i always wondered what that was about — clearly something organic, but what? obviously it’s neither something to brag about nor (duh) to complain about . . . but one is definitely curious. i’ve never met or talked to anyone else who experiences this syndrome, so it can’t be all that common. most people take headaches — mild, severe, occasional, frequent, whatever — for granted, as a fact of life.
anyway, yeah, if it is (as it must be) based on some organic factor then there may be corollary phenomena (god knows what) connected, like a propensity for manic depression (i’m not . . . much) or immunity to poison oak (i am). or SOMETHING.
i’d just like to know what the heck it’s about. tell me if you find out anything Elucidator and let’s keep looking, in our (ha ha) spare time
i’ll tell you one thing though. i sure don’t feel guilty about it : there’s been PLENTY of other you know what in my life to make up for the absence of headaches
I also rarely get headache. If I have a cold, I may get a stuffed up nose and that causes a headache. But otherwise, I can’t recall the last time I got a headache. I never get stomach aches either. Knock wood, I count myself lucky.
Never get headaches. Never had a migraine, tension or a sinus headache…not even an ice cream headache as a kid.
FTR, I am female, drink coffee like it’s going out of style, drink alcohol, and my blood pressure has always been on the low side. I’ve had colds before, even the flu…but never a headache along with it. No idea why.
Medications advertised as “for migraines” typically have caffeine as the only other active ingredient, after the pain reliever itself. The running theory is that caffeine causes blood vessels to constrict, which reduces inflammation. Works for me, at least.
I’ve never had a headache either, or at least nothing I would define as a headache. Sometimes if I get a cold, my head will hurt when I cough; if I’m extremely tired or feeling tense for a long period of time, I’ll feel some very mild (like “barely noticeable” mild), vague pressure; but to me this doesn’t qualify as the kind of headache people are usually talking about when they say they have one. I’ve never had that kind of headache.
I suffered from severe headaches in my childhood, I don’t think they were migraine, they caused vomiting, which relieved them, so they might have been caused by something digestive. As an adult, I occasionally had them, less severe, but I think the last time I had a headache was in 1976 (I was hitchhiking in Liberia), I don’t remember any after that. I learned that lying down made them worse, and they would go away if I rested while sitting up, and tried to relax all my muscles, especially above the shoulders.
I think most people don’t realize how many of their headaches are dehydration headaches. Whenever I feel like I’m starting to get a headache I drink a big glass of water and that cures nearly all of them. Even hangovers are mostly dehydration. If you drink lots of water with your booze, you’ll be fine in the morning.
I’m curious, for those who never get headaches, does that include when you’re ill with some infectious disease? Or do you just mean you never get them during normal times?
Have you ever gotten the flu? That often causes a headache (and lots of other aches).
Lucky lucky you. I have a dandy right now that I will send to you as soon as I find a large and sturdy enough box. I can’t even pinpoint where it is,cause everything above the sholders feels as fragile as a lightbulb. ow
Used to be hardly ever, as in probably one every few years. And there was usually a reason (too much red wine, a neck muscle-pull.)
But in my dotage I appear to have become prone to seasonal allergies with sinus headaches. This year, being very rainy, I’ve gone through an entire bottle of decongestant/headache relief pills since spring. I have just one left. Used to be I could probably go a year or three without even taking an aspirin, and I thought people who complained about allergies were being wusses. Apparently I was wrong.
I really feel for people who get migraines. That sounds absolutely miserable.
Headaches are a function of the size of your brain as compared to the available space in your skull. If you don’t get headaches, your brain probably doesn’t take up much room.
Oh, that’s it. I can’t say never, as I had a headache in 1995, and while I called in sick as I could not function, but it resolved spontaneously with an unacustomed daytime sleep of maybe five hours. Dizzy is another story!
