Medicine to relieve anxiety and headaches

Temporary emergency over-the-counter antipyretic and analgesics (mainly ibuprofen and acetaminophen), prescription anti-anxiety sedatives (alprazolam, lorazepam, etc.) that can be taken as needed when accompanied by acute attacks of severe anxiety, and mood-regulating drugs (such as sertraline, venlafaxine, etc.) that can be taken long-term for chronic patients with frequent attacks. But no medicine is suitable for everyone, and there is no "best medicine". Whether you should take it or not, and what you should take, all depends on the severity of your current headache, the frequency of attacks, and even trivial factors such as how long you slept the day before and whether you drank alcohol. Rather than looking for medicine first, it is more important to figure out whether your headache is really enough to warrant taking medicine.

Last Wednesday when I was working the night shift, I saw a little girl who worked in operations. She rushed in with half a laptop in her arms, her temples were beating so hard that she almost lifted her bangs. She was holding a half-eaten ibuprofen in her hand. She said that she had taken two pills in a row and the pain had not healed for two hours. After asking for a long time, I was told that I would submit a full platform plan for Q3 next week. I had slept less than four hours for three consecutive days. The back of my neck was as hard as a stone slab. It hurt as if there was a miniature version of a tight spell on my head. It hurt even to blink my eyes. In fact, her headache was not an ordinary vascular headache at all, but a tension-type headache caused by anxiety. Long-term muscle tension caused nerve pain. Ibuprofen is an antipyretic and analgesic, and it was of course useless against the stone-tight neck muscles. At that time, she was prescribed two capsules of Eperisone Hydrochloride (muscle relaxant), and asked the nurse to help her press the Fengchi point for ten minutes. She sat in the corridor and blew in the cold wind. Most of the pain disappeared before taking the medicine.

What’s interesting is that colleagues in different departments have very different ideas regarding this kind of anxiety and headache. Chen from the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine would always say a few words every time he saw me prescribing painkillers, saying that young people don’t need to take medicine for this kind of pain. He pressed the Hegu point for five minutes, brewed a cup of hot tea with chrysanthemums and mint leaves, and sat with his eyes closed for ten minutes. It had much fewer side effects than taking ibuprofen. Whenever he had a headache while working on his paper, he relied on this method to relieve himself. He had never taken medicine. Brother Zhang from Shenuchi was just the opposite of him. The two of them had argued about this matter last time. Brother Zhang had seen too many patients who delayed and did not intervene and eventually developed into chronic migraines. He always said that if the pain occurs more than four times a month, don’t hesitate to prescribe some mood-regulating medicine as soon as possible and take it for half a year, so as to avoid headaches and even hot pot troubles for the rest of your life when you are slightly anxious. Sister Li from the psychology department is more direct. Last time a patient asked her what medicine could be used to remove the root. She said directly, "If you go back, you still dare not reply to the boss's 99+ messages. You stay up until three o'clock every day to change the plan. No matter how many medicines you take, it will be useless. Turning off the phone for half an hour is better than anything else." To be honest, there is nothing wrong with any of these views. It all depends on which one is more suitable for your current situation.

I myself made the mistake last month when I was collecting materials for my professional title. My left temple was beating like a drum. I happened to have no medicine on hand, so I did as Lao Chen said, turned off the computer and stood downstairs in the hospital for ten minutes. I called my mother in the evening breeze and chatted about the cats in the community. When I came back, the pain was half gone. I took half an acetaminophen pill before going to bed, and after eight hours of sleep, nothing happened the next day. But if the pain is accompanied by palpitations, trembling hands, and you can't stand still when sitting on a chair, then don't take it hard. Go to the hospital to prescribe some short-acting anti-anxiety drugs. Half a pill of alprazolam is more effective than taking three painkillers - but this is a second-class psychotropic drug. You must not buy it blindly and take it by yourself. The doctor must evaluate your situation before prescribing. If you take too much, you will easily fall asleep and you will fall asleep during a meeting at work the next day, which will delay things.

Don’t take medicine randomly. I treated a programmer last month. In order to meet the project deadline, he ate ibuprofen like candy. He took up to four pills a day. The pain lasted for almost half a month before it came back. After investigation, it was found that it was drug overuse headache. Instead, he had to stop all painkillers first. It took a full week before the pain subsided. There are also those headache essential oils and soothing health care products that are popular online. I have seen many people using them and saying they are useful. Most of them are essentially placebo effects. If you believe this, there is no harm in using them. Don’t expect them to save you when the pain is so severe that you can’t straighten your back.

Oh, by the way, if this is the first time you have this kind of headache, accompanied by vomiting, blurred vision, and numbness in your hands and feet, don’t take medicine blindly. Go get a CT scan as soon as possible to rule out organic problems. Don’t delay. The controversy over whether to take mood-regulating drugs for a long time is still ongoing. Brother Zhang thinks that as long as the seizure frequency is high, you should take them. Sister Li thinks that there is no need to take drugs if you can rely on exercise and psychological counseling to adjust. I usually tell patients the pros and cons of both options. Which one you choose depends on your own life rhythm - after all, the purpose of taking drugs is to make you feel comfortable, not to add new psychological burden to you.

Actually, most of the patients I have come into contact with who suffer from anxiety and headaches do not lack the box of medicine, but lack an excuse to stop for 10 minutes. To put it bluntly, medicine is just a step. Use this step to slow down and don't jump down again. Otherwise, no matter how good the medicine is, it will not be able to hold you up until three o'clock every day and stretch yourself to the point of breaking.