At the 1986 meeting of the American Psychological Association, psychologist Janet Lapp, Ph.D., of California State University, Fresno, reported the findings of a study which showed that restful or pleasant music could be successfully substituted for the autogenic phrases used in conventional biofeedback training.

By merely listening to popular tunes or to any kind of pleasant, relaxing music, participants in the study actually had fewer migraine headaches, and they could abort a migraine more swiftly than those who used verbal phrases and suggestions.

Listening to music, combined with deep relaxation and visualizing a pleasant scene, is believed to stimulate release of natural endorphin painkillers in the brain. By using music, there is also less need for monitoring equipment. And music also works well for tension headaches.

In another study at Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, classical music worked so well as a painkiller that many terminal cancer patients were able to stop taking analgesic medication. Interestingly, the authors of this study found mat the more you enjoy a piece of music, the deeper and more slowly you breathe and the more relaxed you become. A tempo close to your heartbeat rate can be very relaxing. Disturbing music like rock’n'roll is useless. But soothing New Age music, yogic chants, dreamy Hawaiian songs, or classical or popular tunes seem to work well.

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Acupressure, or shiatsu massage, is an ancient Oriental method of pain relief that can often stop a minor headache in just a few minutes. Given a Hole longer, it has been known to subdue the most stubbornly resistant tension or migraine headache.

Scientifically, acupressure has been found to excite small nerve fibers in muscles, causing nerve impulses to be transmitted to the spinal cord and midbrain and on to the pituitary and hypothalamus glands. These glands then release endorphin and enkephalin. While acupressure won’t remove the underlying cause of headache pain, it often provides startling relief. All you do is apply gentle but steady pressure on certain “pressure points” on the body using the bails of the tips of both thumbs, or sometimes the fingers. While applying pressure, you also use thumbs or fingers to provide a rotating massage. Pressure is usually applied for 7 to 18 seconds, then withdrawn. You can return and repeat the massage a few minutes later. And you can give any number of acupressure applications. Frequently, however, two or three applications are all that is required.

Be extremely careful not to use the nails. Women with long nails may be unable to perform acupressure or any other type of massage. Naturally, you can also use acupressure on anyone else.

These are the principal points favored by acupressurists for headache relief.

1. By far the most popular, is the Hoku Point, the fleshy web between forefinger and thumb on each hand. Place the fingers inside the hand with the thumb on the outside of the web. Using the thumb to press and massage, work around the middle part of the web.

Experience has shown that a single 15-second application here can relieve most minor headaches. By repeating every few minutes over a half-hour period, a persistent tension or migraine headache may disappear. Hoku point massage seems most effective in relieving tension headaches or migraines that center in the eye.

Most acupressurists recommend alternate massaging of hoku points in both left and right hands. However, if the pain is focused on the left side of the head, they will usually massage the left band twice as often as the right.

2. Gently pinch the lower part of each earlobe and maintain a circular massaging motion.

3. Pinch the bridge of the nose between ringer and thumb of one hand and massage. Stay far away from the eyes or eye sockets.

4. Bend the wrist of one hand at a right angle. With the thumb of the other hand, press and massage the side of the arm facing you approximately half an inch above the bend of the wrist. Work around and massage this entire area. Repeat on the other wrist.

5. Clasp the hands on top of the head, with fingertips meeting over the crown. Using the thumbs, massage the hollow in back of the neck, at the base of the skull and level with the ears. Press and massage all around this area.

6. Press and massage the temple areas down to the level of the eyes. Stay on the flat, bony side of the face and stay far away from the eyes or eye sockets.

7. For a tension headache, gently press and massage the points at the hinge of the jaw just below the ears on each side.

8. Using the tips of the forefingers, gently massage the hollow area underneath each earlobe. Remember, we said gently.

9. Locate the median line running from the crown of the head down to the bridge of the nose. Along this imaginary line, and on each side of the line about one inch parallel to it, are a cluster of headache-relieving acupressure points.

Using three fingers of each hand, begin at the hairline and work up and back towards the crown. Gently press and massage the area along the median line first, applying pressure for onló seven seconds at a time. Then move fingers one inch away from the line. And once again press and massage points all the way from hair line to crown.

From the crown, you can continue to press and massage all along the median line down to the back of me neck. Next, do the same thing along an imaginary fine leading from the crown down the scalp to a point in front of the ears. Finally, press and massage along another imaginary line running from earlobe to earlobe around the back of the neck.

Acupressure points on the scalp tend to be about one inch apart.

10. Place the hands on the back of the skull with fingertips touching. Use the thumbs to press and massage points on die outer side of die neck muscles all the way from the base of the skull to the bottom of the neck. Using acupressure on this area often provides fast relief from tension headaches.

11. Massaging the feet to stop a headache sounds like reaching the attic through the basement door. Yet the feet bristle with nerve endings that respond well to acupressure-type massage. When acupressure is used on the feet, it is known as reflexology. In reflexology, however, both thumbs are used together, side by side, to press and maintain a circular massaging motion on one foot at a time.

Nor is pressing and massaging the feet limited to 15-second bouts. One may continue to massage the feet for as long as desired. After massaging one foot, the other foot is usually given the same treatment.

For headache relief, begin by pressing and massaging both sides of each big toe, then massage the fleshy underside of each big toe. Give these areas a thorough working over. If you feel any tender spots, concentrate these points. They are often the key to headache relief.

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After reading the results of two university studies made during the mid-1980s, thousands of women migraine sufferers have diminished their migraine symptoms by taking daily magnesium supplements.

In the first study, at East Tennessee State University, 500 selected women with migraine were each asked to take 100 or 200 mg of magnesium in supplement form daily. For some, relief came within hours. Most felt much better in just a few days. Some women, who had had splitting headaches for two straight weeks, quickly became symptom-free. Overall, seven out of ten women had no migraines for as long as they continued taking the magnesium.

In a similar study reported from Case Western Reserve, headaches stopped in 80 percent of sufferers after they had taken 200 mg of supplemental magnesium for two or three weeks. In another case, a Chicago woman who had suffered migraine attacks several times weekly for over ten years, had had to take increasing amounts of drugs to control her pain. Agony and depression were wrecking her life. Yet after taking 200 mg of supplemental magnesium daily for four weeks, her headaches had almost completely disappeared.

It has been suggested that, through causing the smooth muscles surrounding each artery in the body to relax and dilate, magnesium effectively blocks Stage 2 in the migraine sequence.

Other studies have shown that four out of every five Americans are deficient in magnesium reserves, especially those who drink soda or alcoholic beverages. Many drugs also bind with magnesium and prevent its absorption.

Magnesium supplements in 200 mg tablets are readily available in any health food store. An intake of 200 mg a day is considered riskless by most nutritionists. However, if you have any kidney or other health problems, or are under medical treatment or taking medication, you should consult your physician before taking supplemental magnesium.

Alternatively, you can increase your dietary uptake of magnesium by eating more magnesium-rich foods such as avocados, soybeans, black-eyed peas, almonds, cashews, Brazil nuts and other types of beans and peas.

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After reading the results of two university studies made during the mid-1980s, thousands of women migraine sufferers have diminished their migraine symptoms by taking daily magnesium supplements.

In the first study, at East Tennessee State University, 500 selected women with migraine were each asked to take 100 or 200 mg of magnesium in supplement form daily. For some, relief came within hours. Most felt much better in just a few days. Some women, who had had splitting headaches for two straight weeks, quickly became symptom-free. Overall, seven out of ten women had no migraines for as long as they continued taking the magnesium.

In a similar study reported from Case Western Reserve, headaches stopped in 80 percent of sufferers after they had taken 200 mg of supplemental magnesium for two or three weeks. In another case, a Chicago woman who had suffered migraine attacks several times weekly for over ten years, had had to take increasing amounts of drugs to control her pain. Agony and depression were wrecking her life. Yet after taking 200 mg of supplemental magnesium daily for four weeks, her headaches had almost completely disappeared.

It has been suggested that, through causing the smooth muscles surrounding each artery in the body to relax and dilate, magnesium effectively blocks Stage 2 in the migraine sequence.

Other studies have shown that four out of every five Americans are deficient in magnesium reserves, especially those who drink soda or alcoholic beverages. Many drugs also bind with magnesium and prevent its absorption.

Magnesium supplements in 200 mg tablets are readily available in any health food store. An intake of 200 mg a day is considered riskless by most nutritionists. However, if you have any kidney or other health problems, or are under medical treatment or taking medication, you should consult your physician before taking supplemental magnesium.

Alternatively, you can increase your dietary uptake of magnesium by eating more magnesium-rich foods such as avocados, soybeans, black-eyed peas, almonds, cashews, Brazil nuts and other types of beans and peas.

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This is the dilation phase of the headache process. In all three headache types, actual pain occurs as arteries in the forehead, scalp and brain dilate. Fine nerve laments (nerve plexuses), which line the walls of these arteries, are extremely sensitive to being stretched. When the arteries swell and distend, these nerves fairly scream with pain.

At no time does the brain itself experience pain, for it contains no sensory nerves. All intracranial sensitivity exists in the membranes, or meninges, that line the inner wall of the skull.

Tension Headache. Most tension headaches occur as arteries in the forehead, scalp and brain dilate. Other pain signals may be generated by nerve endings located in the contracted muscles of shoulders, neck and scalp. Several hours after the headache begins, these muscles begin to relax and cease to generate further pain signals. But it may be 12 hours before the headband arteries return to normal size and the headache dissipates spontaneously. Throughout the tension headache, blood flow to the head remains constant and unchanged.

Migraine Headaches. Although observations at headache clinics indicate that common migraine may be more painful than the classic variety, from the beginning of Stage 3 on, the headache process is virtually identical for both migraine types.

Once the cerebral blood vessels dilate, the headache begins. Occasionally, the pain is mild and bearable; more often it appears as a throbbing, hammering pain that envelops the eye and nostril on one side of the head.

The pain can become so severe that victims are unable to walk straight, and may bump into furniture. During some attacks, the pain is so disabling that the person becomes incapable of coherent thought. Roughly half of all migraineurs experience nausea and vomiting. Others arc plagued by diarrhea, dizziness, or bouts of hot flashesalternated with shivering spells. It is not unusual to see the arteries pulsating on the scalp while veins on the forehead are also visibly swollen.

The pain may reach back and follow the temporal artery up and over the ear and back to the neck on the afflicted side. Rarely does migraine appear on both sides of the head at once. Gradually, what feels like army boots pounding on the skull gives way to a steady ache. The torment can last from three hours to three days.

Yet in most cases, the headache lasts only until the victim falls asleep. When the migraineur wakes up, the headache is gone. The sufferer may feel weak and washed out and may pass copious amounts of pale urine, but permanent physical damage is rare.

Migraine does not usually return until the supply of norepinephrine has been replenished. This normally guarantees freedom from another attack for at least several days.

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Most of us are so accustomed to assuming that a drug or injection exists to provide instant relief for almost any kind of pain, that we tend to see a drug solution for just about every problem.

This has led most Americans to severely overestimate the curative power of headache drugs. The cold facts are that, for other than the occasional mild tension headache, most anti-headache drugs are only 70 percent effective in providing relief. And no really dependable drug exists for treating cluster or menstrual migraine headaches.

Furthermore, studies have shown that approximately 33 percent of the benefits ascribed to headache medications are due, not to any pharmaceutical action, but to the placebo effect—to the patient’s own belief in the drug’s ability to heal. When we subtract the healing power of the placebo effect, it is only too apparent that drug therapy has severe limitations of which most people are unaware.

Control your headache with natural therapies. As you are transformed from a passive headache victim to a confident, medically-informed layperson, any tendencies toward helplessness, hopelessness, depression or anxiety should swiftly fade away. You learn that drugs are not the only way to overcome headaches and you become motivated to take an active role in your own recovery.

Research has shows out, through the placebo effect, people with a strongly positive attitude recover 25-33 percent faster from any kind of ailment, disease or dysfunction from a minor headache to major surgery.

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