How does rubbing our temples or forehead help alleviate a headache?
In: Biology
Sometimes, moving lymph around eases pain. Lymph is clear liquid under the surface of your skin – kind of a gross example, but you know how when a pimple pops,first the dirt comes out, then clear stuff? The clear stuff is lymph.
The science behind it isn’t certain, but there are lymph drainage points at certain areas around your body. If you massage the lymph to the drainage point, it very very (VERY) slightly eases swelling and puffiness from those areas. From the facial massage videos I’ve watched, the drainage point for the lymph in your face is under your ears. So, if you massage the skin on your face from front (like starting near your nose, or from the center of your face near where your headache is) to back, moving toward the neck under your ears, it drains the lymph and it can ease a little bit of pain/puffiness, such as puffiness under your eyes.
This is just stuff I’ve learned from relaxing facial massage videos though lol, and after trying to look it up on Wikipedia it sounds like the science is out on whether it actually makes a significant difference.
Depends on the headache, but many are tension related so massaging the scalp, temples and neck relaxes the muscles around the head the same way that massaging a stiff and aching leg would help alleviate some tension.
Some headaches are caused by pressure differences in the blood vessels around the skull too, so rubbing these areas could potentially flex, contract and relax these vessels alleviating pain.
I’m not a doctor though so don’t upvote me, I just get a bloody ton of headaches.
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