My acupuncturist told me about an interesting phenomenon and I want to know if it holds true for other people.
When you don’t have a headache, relax your arms at your sides and push on your thighs in the area around where your arms hit. Is the area tender more tender than on another part of your body if you were to push it, like your calves?
Repeat this when you have a headache. Are the spots on your thighs more or less tender than when you didn’t have a headache.
Revealing the phenomenon would further compromise this already compromised experiment. So leave a comment or e-mail me with what you find and I’ll reveal the “results” in about a week. (No fair cheating by looking at the comments on the post!)
The verdict, 03/26/07: My acupuncturist told me that when people have migraines, the area on their thighs becomes painful to the touch and is not sensitive otherwise. This didn’t hold up in my “experiment.” Some people describe the same thing my acupuncturist said; many describe the opposite. I thought that he’d hit on a neat phenomenon, but apparently not.
This may be too late to post now, but I have found it is sensitive when I have a headache – I am very interested to know how it is supposed to be!!!
Jamie
I’m not sure I pressed in on the right place on my thighs, but I tried this today. I was feeling good this morning and pressed in and it seemed kind of tender but nothing really noticeable. Tonight I had a headache, so I did it again, and it felt the same at first. But when I moved my hands inward just about an inch or two, it was VERY tender when I had the headache.
I’m definitely going to try the Migrastick, it sounds really nice. Just the scent alone would be soothing.
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Thanks!
I found that there is significant pain when pushing on my thighs unless I am in the midst of a migraine. When I have a migraine, I know the pain is less or not even there because a thigh massage often helps me through the pain. If it hurt like that during the migraine, no massage would be possible.
I look forward to your results!
I’m never without a headache, but I did this experiment when my headache was low on the pain scale and when it was high on the scale.
I found that it “hurt” to push in on my thighs at that spot when I had a minor headache. When my headache was worse, I just felt pressure and no pain at all.
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Hmm… 😀
Kerrie
I was so astounded to see this! I have not truly done the experiment yet (I will) but I find that I have pretty intense sensitivity in exactly that area on my thighs off and on and I have always wondered why. I have never correlated it to whether or not I am having a headache. Right now I have a mild one and I am mildly sensitive there, but nothing like the odd sensitivity that I have noticed in the past. I will keep checking and try to tie it to my headaches and report back!!
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I’m looking forward to hearing what you find out.
Kerrie
I’m never really entirely headache-free, but I tried the experiment anyway. I was hurting quite a bit last night, and when I tried the pressure test on my thighs, I barely felt it at all.
This morning I’m feeling a bit better and did the test again to find that the same places on my thighs are more sensitive now.
Hmmm….
I was reading the acupuncture post and looked back on the previous post about topical headache products. I’m nervous about the extra ingredients in the advertised ones on tv.
I found something called “Migrastick” that has only lavender and peppermint essential oils in it. I really like it.
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Very interesting. Thus far the experiment has been completely unsuccessful!
Thanks for the tip on Migrastick. In All in My Head, Paula Kamen says that she finds blending lavender and peppermint essential oils to be a good topical treatment. Sounds nice to not have to mix your own.
Kerrie