Headaches

Not actually Erin.

Picture by KJ Photography

& is used with permission.

I believe I've mentioned that I suffer from chronic, severe allergies. Imagine living with a cold for most of your life, where you are constantly blowing and wiping your nose, or where you are struggling to breathe because your sinuses are plugged, and you get an idea of what I live with daily. Some days are better, some are worse, but nearly all of them contain some sort of nose-related activity.

One of the more delightful side effects of these allergies is that I have frequent headaches. This is because the mucous in my sinuses prevents the pressure inside my head from equalizing with the outside world, so any time the weather changes -- high pressure front, low pressure front, rain, storm front, etc etc -- my head hurts as the pressure inside my skull tries to equalize with the pressure outside.

Some days I can handle the pain with simple over the counter medications. Other days, the pain is so horrible that the only thing I can do is crawl into bed and hope to pass out into the perfect painkiller than is unconsciousness.

In a SHTF scenario, neither of these options are likely to be available to me. But there is one pain easement technique (not a cure, mind you -- it soothes but doesn't solve) I know which works on every headache I've had:  Having the top of my head scratched with fingernails.

I'm not entirely sure why this works. I believe there's a nerve cluster there, and stimulating it with vigorous fingernail scratching helps me relax. All I know is that it works, and it can make a terrible headache into a tolerable one, or help destroy one when combined with painkillers.

If you have a headache that won't go away, give this a try. In my experience it requires actual scratchiness, so if you don't have any fingernails then you may have to substitute something stimulating, like a brush with stiff bristles.

Let me know if this works, and if you have any other sure-fire headache solutions that can be used post-SHTF, please list them in the comments below.

And now I'm off to bed, as my head has been aching all afternoon.