** Turpentine, ** you can get your blood pressure checked for free at any fire station around your neighborhood. That’s what I would get checked first.
Secondly, I mistakenly called you ‘porcupine’ in your houseguest thread over in the BBQ pit, I’m sorry. BUT, * THAT is enough * to cause you a great deal of stressful headaches too.
You mentioned that you got teased over ‘grinding your teeth’, that too, is usually stress related, ANOTHER excellent reason to get rid of ‘Mr. Houseguest from Hell’.
I was going to ask about any clenching or grinding of jaws or teeth, but others beat me to it. This is a frequent cause of headaches. Look up material on TMJ. The problem could be occurring a couple different ways:
Did you start (or increase) the habit of chewing gum when you quit smoking? This is a favorite quitting-smoking aid, and it can lead to jaw stress, which leads to headaches.
Teeth-grinding at night will fatigue your jaws, and sore, tired jaws can cause headaches. You could have started or increased this habit after quitting.
Stress and changes in routine (like quitting smoking) can cause you to clench your jaws during the day. Again, this leads to jaw fatigue, sore teeth, and headaches.
If you’re exercising more after quitting smoking, you may be clenching your teeth during physical exertion.
Possible solutions:
First, check your jaw for tiredness, soreness, sore teeth, etc. Even if the tiredness and soreness are subtle, they can be enough to cause headaches. If you’re grinding your teeth at night, check to see how your jaw feels in the morning.
A dentist can examine your teeth for signs of clenching and night grinding, offer solutions, and educate you on TMJ.
If your are chewing gum as a quit-smoking crutch, then switch to toothpicks or something else that you don’t chew on.
The night-grinding (officially called “bruxism”) is worth a trip to the dentist in any case. You can literally grind your teeth down flat. (I have flat wisdom teeth in back.) Across time it can also give you a long-term case of TMJ, which is pretty miserable stuff (headaches is one symptom.) If you don’t want to go to the dentist right away, here’s a quick fix you can try at home: Buy one of those cheap plastic mouthguards ($2.50) that football players wear. You can find them at any sports store. Follow the directions for fitting it to your mouth (you dip it in boiling water to soften it and then bite it). And then put it in your mouth and wear it while you sleep. You’ll tend to spit it out in your sleep the first few nights, but eventually you will get used to it and keep it in all night. Try wearing it for a week or two for starters.
Some people only need to wear the mouthpiece for a few weeks during a stressful time, and then the problem goes away. Others need to wear it every night (like me). You clean it by putting it in a bath of water with an Efferdent tablet during the day. Change the water once a week.
If you are exercising more after quitting smoking, wear the same kind of mouthpiece when you exercise.
In general: Clenching and grinding may or may not be the source of your headaches. But it’s definitely an avenue worth checking, especially since you grind your teeth at night.
And my houseguest was not around all night either and i had my boyfriend over and we microwaved a CD after your suggestions, although not the APOP or VNB Nation cd’s of the housguest- just an effigy CD.
You are right guys- microwaving CD’s is beautiful!
I put two and two together- absence of houseguest = absence of headache.
I thought that answer was too obvious.
And while i can’t be bold enough to toss his stuff out the window, I did tell him when he got home at 2:00 am that we are really comfortable with just three people in the house and don’t really need a fourth person, since he expressed interest in moving in permanently and i screamed inwardly.