Whether you get one a month or one a year, headaches are nasty stuff.  Lots of money is spent on dealing with them.  I used to get them regularly when I was young, until I figured out how to handle them, and then my life became much more pleasant.  In fact, learning how to get rid of one headache is what put me on the path of food and healing that I have been on for the past 45 years.

In the mid-60’s, I got involved in macrobiotics.  This is a diet/lifestyle based on a complex philosophy that uses a lot of Asian/Chinese medicine concepts, particularly what has been called the “yin/yang system.”  To simplify this concept, I will use the words “expansive” and “contractive.”  What I learned is that usually if you get  sick or off-center you are generally too “yin”, or expansive, and the thing to do is to eat or drink something “yang” or contractive.  So one day I developed a terrific headache, and I assumed that I had become to “expansive.”  Expansive are things like sugar, fruit, juice, or alcohol.  Contractive are things like meat, dry food, or salt.  So as I was too expansive (I thought), I ate something contractive – gomasio, or sesame salt.  This made me feel much worse.  So I figured I had not had enough, and I took some “umeboshi plum”, a salty pickled plum that is quite powerfully contractive – and I thought my head was going to fall off my shoulders.

Now I am somewhat stubborn, and also like to think things through.  So I said to myself, if I get worse from a contractive remedy, maybe I’m going in the wrong direction.  Maybe I was too contractive to start with.  When I thought about what I had been eating earlier in the day, it had been a lot of salt and tightening food – aha!  So I took an expansive remedy – apple sauce, which is fruity, watery, sweet/sour, and I took two bowls of it – and in ten minutes my headache vanished.  I was floored.  And I said to myself, if I can cure a headache with applesauce, I’m on to something!  So here I am after all these years. 

Eventually I came up with a concept of headaches that has been extremely useful,.  I understand there are five, maybe six types of headaches, and they each need a different remedy.  When you find the right remedy, it usually works within minutes.  These are the types of headaches, their causes and remedies:

1.  Expansive – from too much fruit, ice cream, sugar, dessert, alcohol.  To get rid of it, eat salty food like olives, umeboshi plums, anchovies – even salty potato chips.

2.  Contractive – from too much protein, salt, not enough food, not enough water, too much heat, too much stress, work, tension.  To get rid of it:  two glasses of juice, (any kind, apple juice works well), apple sauce, lemon ice, seltzer with lemon. 

3.  Caffeine withdrawal headache.  This one you get when you STOP caffeine.  Even if you drink less than usual.  So, if you have one cup of coffee daily, and then one day you have two cups, and the next day you go back to one, you will get a caffeine withdrawal headache from the one you’re not having.  Caffeine is insidious and nasty.  Lots of over-the-counter drugs used as headache remedies have caffeine, and if you take those you could get a caffeine withdrawal headache too.  Having some caffeine will stop a caffeine withdrawal headache, which is one reason why people keep drinking their coffee.  Reminder: there is caffeine in tea, black tea, green tea, decaf tea or coffee, chocolate, and so on.  It is the most popular drug in the US, and I would guess that more than 98% of the people are addicted to it.  If you have a caffeine withdrawal headache, drink lots of water, and wait till it goes away.  If you clear the caffeine from your system – which could take 2,3 weeks – you  will feel calmer and steadier.  Don’t go cold turkey, it could be very painful. Go really slow.  One of the stranger  things that has happened lately is that chocolate has become a health food.  People who promote chocolate for its antioxidants or whatever, seem to ignore the caffeine problem. 

4.  Liver headache.  This comes from oily food in an empty stomach – like a big bag of chips (which can be 70% oil), or other oily food.  If it drops into the empty stomach and does not get diluted, when it hits the gallbladder 3-4 hours later the headache starts.  It is sort of a migrainy headache, sick feeling, your eyes may hurt (the eyes relate to the liver in Chinese medicine).  Remedy:  lots of lemon.  Lemon tea is a great remedy (see below).

5. Structural headache.  If none of the above apply, see if there has been a blow to the head.  One person who saw me for a consultation had been having a headache for months, and nothing worked.  I gave him a variety of remedies – expansive, contractive, lemon – and indeed nothing worked.  So I asked him if he’d hit his head recently.  He said indeed, he had fallen off his motorcycle!  So I sent him to my chiropractor – you can try massage or craneo-sacral therapy also – and one session helped straighten him out!  Sometimes if your head gets hit, the cranial plates get stuck so they don’t move when you breathe, and that gives you  a headache.  Keep it in mind.

6.  Allergic headaches.  I’m not sure how those work, and they are different for different people, depending on their allergies – but if this is your case, pay attention and stay away from common allergens like dairy, wheat, and gluten.

As you can see, lots of simple daily things can be remedies for headaches.  If you understand the model, you should be able to heal any headache you get within minutes.

Here is the Lemon Tea recipe.  It is based on an Argentine folk recipe called “el te de la Madre Celestina.”  Enjoy!

LEMON TEA

½ organic lemon
1 cup water

1.  Juice the ½  lemon and pour juice into a cup.  Take the juiced-out peel, cut into several pieces, and place in a pot with the cup of water.

2.  Simmer the lemon peel in the water for 10 minutes.  Strain water into the cup with the juice.  Discard the peel.  Drink hot.  Makes 1 serving.  Enjoy!