Cure your headache

By Carol Weimer
Canastota Corner

It’s not often that you to run across someone who says he or she’s have never had a headache. They are a nuisance and wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could eliminate them forever?

There are all types of headaches and most are dealt with taking two aspirin and perhaps rest. Allergies, sinus, tension, eye strain, hunger, hypertension, over-exertion can cause them, as well as the classic hangover. Then there are the caffeine withdrawal and cluster headaches. Arthritis contributes to pain in the head and the worst of them all, the migraine, which comes in many phases and descriptions. with so many effects on the whole body.

It is a fact that over 50 million people in the United States alone consult physicians for relief of headache pain. Millions annually is spent on aspirin, acetaminophen and other medicines to alleviate the problem. Migraine sufferers are told to avoid certain foods - onions, figs, chocolate, hot fresh bread, bananas, processed meats, yogurt, nuts, plums, vinegar, sour cream, seeds such as sesame, sunflower and pumpkin (we thought they were health foods), and others. What a bummer; I like them all.

I once had a girlfriend, whose mother who lived with a constant headache. Whenever we would go to her home, her mother was always on the couch with a damp cloth on her forehead, suffering from a daily headache. I often wonder if she ever was relieved of them and lives a normal life.

Have you tested your home’s air? If you get a headache after being gone all day, maybe the dry air is what is giving you pain. A humidifier is the answer.

At our house we have humidifiers both in all our rooms. Years ago, when it was legal to burn leaves in the fall, the smoke would give some folks terrific headaches; for others it was a favorite aroma that signified fall.

Here are some folk remedies from an old-time almanac:

• Soak your feet in hot water to draw blood from your head.

• Run around the house outside three times.

• Sleep with a pair of scissors under your pillow.
• Ask a seventh child to blow in your ear.

• Have mom or someone else rub your head and the headache will be transferred to that person, but will be less severe.

• Put a buckwheat pancake on your head.

• Take an egg and roast it well in the coals and when it is hard cleave it in two and as hot as thou mayst suffer it, lay it to the head and it shall take away the aching (15th century).

• Wrap damp cloths around your head and burn scented wood.

• Heat hillwort (thyme) and aysell (vinegar) and put it in your nostrils that the odor may go to the brain.

• Rub cow dung and molasses on your temples. (It isn’t as bad as it sounds; you can use commercial manure that is odorless.)

• And lastly, tie a leather thong lightly around your head. If this fails, you may tell your friends, “The thong is over but the malady lingers on,” which will give them headaches.

All these remedies were actually used in the early centuries and some in the early part of this century.