1. Use Pain-Relieving Medications
Stress headaches, also called tension headaches, are what most people consider normal, everyday headaches. They can be episodic or chronic. Episodic headaches occur infrequently and can have many triggers. The best way to treat episodic headaches is with over-the-counter pain relievers like acetaminophen or aspirin. For most people, these medications provide quick and effective pain relief.
If you have severe episodic or chronic stress headaches, however, a visit to the doctor is in order. Most tension headaches do not indicate an underlying cause, but there are rare instances in which severe headache can point to serious health issues. Your doctor can provide access to prescription-strength analgesics, which offer more effective pain relief. If you experience migraine headaches, taking triptan drugs can help treat both types of headaches, as some research suggests they may be linked.
2. Use Preventative Medications
Chronic stress headaches can also be treated with preventative prescription medication therapies. These therapies can decrease the frequency and intensity of stress headaches but may not prevent them altogether. The most common drugs prescribed for this purpose are tricyclic antidepressants. These drugs are effective, but they carry significant side effects. On the other hand, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are also antidepressants, have fewer side effects, but they are not as effective when used to prevent headaches.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), anti-convulsants, muscle relaxers and cardiovascular medications are also used to prevent tension headaches. All preventative medication therapies take time to reach full effectiveness. Your doctor will monitor your condition and will likely adjust your medications repeatedly before finding what works best for you.
3. Reduce Stress Through Exercise
Changing your lifestyle to minimize stress may relieve your headaches. Adopt a regular exercise routine to relieve stress by relaxing muscles and triggering natural endorphins in the body. Exercise can also help with acute headaches. Sometimes exercise can actually trigger a headache, however. If this happens to you, ask your doctor to recommend other exercises.
4. Handle Stress With Biofeedback
Learn to manage stress better to relieve your headaches. Biofeedback is a technique that teaches you how to manipulate body functions to better respond to stress. At a biofeedback session, you are hooked up to a machine that monitors your body's response to stress. You then try different strategies to cope with stress and see how those work for you in real time. Eventually, you should be able to apply those strategies to stress in your life.
