April 22, 2025
By
Lisa Fields
April 22, 2025
By
Lisa Fields
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In Brief
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Are you tired of relying on over-the-counter painkillers every time you’re sidelined with a headache? A natural remedy may help soothe your discomfort, and finding relief may be as simple as tweaking some of your daily habits.
“Poor sleep, lack of exercise, unhealthy eating habits, dehydration and stress can all trigger or worsen headaches or cause them to progress over time,” said Nolan Pearson, MD, a Cedars-Sinai neurologist specializing in headache medicine. “When those issues are addressed, people can benefit.”
Migraine and tension headaches are two of the most common types of headaches. Some natural remedies that are effective in reducing migraine symptoms may also help improve tension headaches.
Pearson recommends these natural treatments to ease headache discomfort:
Aim for seven to eight hours of sleep each night. Keep the same bedtime and wake-up time daily. Stop eating three hours before bed, stop drinking liquids two hours before bed and avoid screens for an hour before bed. “There are studies showing that if people have poor sleep and that’s addressed, they can revert from chronic migraines back to episodic migraines,” Pearson said.
Aerobic exercise that increases your heart rate—such as walking, biking or swimming—has been shown to decrease the number of days that people experience migraines each month. Aim for 150 minutes of aerobic exercise weekly (30 minutes daily).
“Poor sleep, lack of exercise, unhealthy eating habits, dehydration and stress can all trigger or worsen headaches or cause them to progress over time. When those issues are addressed, people can benefit.”
Changes to your routine may trigger a migraine, so it’s important to eat on a regular schedule.
“Some studies showed that people who have frequent headaches have diets that are high in foods that cause inflammation,” Pearson said. Avoid inflammatory choices, such as processed foods, white flour (often found in bread or pasta), fried foods, red meat and foods with added sugars. Instead, pick foods that help reduce inflammation, such as leafy green vegetables, fruits, fatty fish, nuts, extra-virgin olive oil, ginger and turmeric.
Dehydration may cause headache symptoms, so drink six to eight 8-ounce glasses of water daily.
Use your calendar or an app to track when you get headaches, how long they last, possible triggers (such as traveling or being stressed), which medications you take for headache pain and how quickly they work, if at all. “It helps patients identify triggers, so they can manage them,” Pearson said.
“It hasn’t been studied much, but a lot of patients recommend it, and it makes sense,” Pearson says. The cool temperature may slow the rate of nerve transmission and constrict dilated blood vessels, which may reduce pain.
Explore calming activities such as yoga, mindfulness meditation and progressive muscle-relaxation techniques. Seeing a psychologist who can provide cognitive behavioral therapy or biofeedback may also help.
If you experience a sudden, drastically different headache—“a 10 out of 10, severe, unrelenting, thunderclap headache,” Pearson said—go to the emergency department.
For new headaches, or if the headaches you’ve always self-treated have worsened or stopped responding to over-the-counter painkillers, see a doctor.
“Primary care doctors are well trained to address simple headaches,” Pearson said. “Lots of new headache-specific medications have come out in the past five to 10 years that have revolutionized our field.”
For complex headaches, your doctor may refer you to a headache clinic, where neurologists identify and treat difficult-to-diagnose headaches. They’ll review your medical records and medical history, ask about your headache history and possible risk factors, perform a neurologic exam, and sometimes request blood work or imaging tests.
“We spend an hour with every new patient,” Pearson said. “Many have seen a lot of doctors and were dismissed, so it’s important to give them a clear diagnosis. We talk about medications, injections or procedures—plus lifestyle approaches that align with their treatment goals—and then we monitor their progress.”
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