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Not 100%, but much better...
Feb. 11th, 2019 04:44 pmGoing to state right off that I'm not looking for advice.
I believe I have tracked the cause of my regular tension headaches down. After months of swapping out pillows until I found one that did not regularly cause my head and neck to be hurting in the morning, my overall head/neck/shoulder pain has localized to one spot in the back of my head where one of the muscles connects to the skull. My current hypothesis is that I strained it somehow and the various pillows and bad form when lifting weights keeps aggravating it and keeping it from healing. The allover neck and shoulder/upper back pain seems to be from everything else trying to compensate for that muscle being injured.
The pillow in question is s $12 pillow from IKEA. YOU KNOW WE SPENT $160 ON A SPECIAL PILLOW AT ONE POINT and it was a damn TWELVE DOLLAR PILLOW FROM IKEA THAT MY HEAD AND NECK WANTED. (The $160 pillow has directional speakers in it that I can plug my phone into and listen to podcasts without Toby hearing, so we're keeping it for the times when I do have a headache and can't stand to wear my headband-with-speakers at night. [And no, the headband doesn't cause the headaches--we ascertained that with the pillow--but it does aggravate one that's already started, worse than the pillow-with-speakers.])
Now that the headaches are minimized--not completely gone, alas, but much better--I've discovered that Advil, which didn't do a damn thing for the headaches, actually does help a bit with the possibly-strained-muscle, so my current plan is to keep at it for a week or two and see if it seems to be improving. And yes, I've emailed my doctor and told her all this and my plan, and plan to heed any advice she gives me.
(Again, no advice, thank you.)
eta: And yes, another part of the plan is to meet with a personal trainer and get my form corrected. :) We're on a cruise before too long: I may book an hour with one there, if not I'll find some time that the university gym isn't full of students and book one then.
I believe I have tracked the cause of my regular tension headaches down. After months of swapping out pillows until I found one that did not regularly cause my head and neck to be hurting in the morning, my overall head/neck/shoulder pain has localized to one spot in the back of my head where one of the muscles connects to the skull. My current hypothesis is that I strained it somehow and the various pillows and bad form when lifting weights keeps aggravating it and keeping it from healing. The allover neck and shoulder/upper back pain seems to be from everything else trying to compensate for that muscle being injured.
The pillow in question is s $12 pillow from IKEA. YOU KNOW WE SPENT $160 ON A SPECIAL PILLOW AT ONE POINT and it was a damn TWELVE DOLLAR PILLOW FROM IKEA THAT MY HEAD AND NECK WANTED. (The $160 pillow has directional speakers in it that I can plug my phone into and listen to podcasts without Toby hearing, so we're keeping it for the times when I do have a headache and can't stand to wear my headband-with-speakers at night. [And no, the headband doesn't cause the headaches--we ascertained that with the pillow--but it does aggravate one that's already started, worse than the pillow-with-speakers.])
Now that the headaches are minimized--not completely gone, alas, but much better--I've discovered that Advil, which didn't do a damn thing for the headaches, actually does help a bit with the possibly-strained-muscle, so my current plan is to keep at it for a week or two and see if it seems to be improving. And yes, I've emailed my doctor and told her all this and my plan, and plan to heed any advice she gives me.
(Again, no advice, thank you.)
eta: And yes, another part of the plan is to meet with a personal trainer and get my form corrected. :) We're on a cruise before too long: I may book an hour with one there, if not I'll find some time that the university gym isn't full of students and book one then.
