New Daily Persistent Headache Support Group

Godd Morning Everyone,

Yesterday, I had been suffering from a headache all day long. I looked forward to a massage which was scheduled at 5:30. I enjoyed mmost of it and actually slept through some, but when I got home, I was really sick and vomited for 1/2 an hour. Has this ever happened to anyone?

hi i went to massage school for a year. i couldnt continue b.c i got pregnant with my son. anyway, we learned that this can happen to some people. you should be feeling better in a few days. also if you dont get massages often you could get REALLY sore muscles for a few days.

My 11 y/o daughter tried massage. She went to a really good massage therapist, who was very gentle w/her. She tolerated the massage, but immediately after, her headache spiked at a 10+ for days! In fact, this led to a readmission for DHE. It sent her from a 6/7 to a 10+!

This was explained to us by our pedi-neuro/headache specialist as she is hypersensitive to any amount of stimuli. We won't do massage for her again! The lady doing it commented that she went from having an almond size to goose egg size knot, at the neck and occipital area. She was just hoping to help her, she didn't charge us anything. The whole time, I was sitting there watching her massage thinking it should be ME getting the massage! I had been (still am) SO stressed out watching her hurt for so long and not being able to help.

Some people find relief w/massage, others like my daughter, didn't.

Take Care!

I am a massage therapist and my husband has NDPH. I give him massage often and have found that certain spots will make him nauseous if I continue to press on them, while other spots give him great relief.

Your reaction is uncommon and unfortunate. It may just be overstimulation, as was mentioned. You could try a therapist who does CST, which is very light touch.

I wish you the best and sorry you had such a negative reaction to massage.

The same thing happened to my dd Becca... Her first massage, which was actually for lower back pain, ended with her having a 10 headache afterward. The therapist was trying to "help" her headache and it backfired badly. She still goes for the massage once a month for her back, but the therapist doesn't touch her head or neck!

Bev

I have chronic headaches from muscle spasms in my neck; my doc gives me muscle relaxers and encourages massage (I also do medical accupuncture as well, if interested in this type of alternative you can visit the alternative meds support group page). My massage therapist who also had the same problem as me said many therapists in an attempt to relax the neck muscles actually make the headache worse; for this situation a gentler massage works, whatever she did it worked on me!

As far as nausea; massage can "release" a lot of toxins and nausea can be a normal reaction. Drink lots of water and maybe go with sweedish massage for the first few sessions and slowly build up pressure in deep tissue massage.

I acctually found more "toxin release" (nausea) after my first sweedish massage (post chemo) than I ever had in a deep tissue massage precancer.

FYI - (my MRI shows the "abnormality found in migraine patients; although I haven't had a "classic migraine" in years and have only had a few minor ones)

Hi Jessica, Welcome to the forum. Thanks for your input on how to reduce the nausea from toxin release. That may be really helpful to those who decide to give massage a try for their headaches.

I have heard massage recommended a lot for those who have muscle-related headaches. It is always good to run it by the doctor in case there are other complicating factors (besides if they refer, you might get insurance to pay for at least some of it).

I wish there were a good way for those who don't have an obvious muscular component to their headaches to tell if massage will be beneficial or not (or make it hurt worse), but so far I haven't heard of any consistent patterns.

Anyway thanks for sharing your experiences. I hope they will be helpful to some other people and maybe spare them the worst of the nausea.