The Great Undiscovered Pain Medicine
Peppermint Oil
Why take an aspirin or Tylenol when a pleasant aromatic herb can get rid of your tension headache just as quickly?
If you often pop pills to stop the pain of tension headaches, you're hardly alone. But wouldn't it be better to cure your headache without resorting to such pills? A surprising, newly discovered natural remedy for common headaches does exist, but you won't see it on television commercials or over-the-counter drug racks in pharmacies. This novel pain medicine remains largely undiscovered anywhere, except in Germany, where investigators have proved it very effective in relieving ordinary tension headaches, the type that torment virtually everyone occasionally.
Headache pain originates from tension in the outer linings of the brain, the scalp and its blood vessels and muscles- The pain may engulf the whole head or only the back of the neck, the forehead, or one side of the head, and can be mild or deep, sharp, and throbbing. Common tension headaches, say experts, are caused when the face, neck, and scalp tighten up, often because of stress. The pain can last for days or even weeks.
Since tension headaches originate in the outer surface of the head, perhaps cooling them down by applying something to the outside of the head might work. Say, peppermint oil? It may seem like an eccentric idea. But peppermint is an ancient medicine with soothing powers. And it can help relieve some of the ills of modem life. Indeed, new German research shows that rubbing peppermint oil on your forehead is just as apt to cure your tension headache as taking a Tylenol! Some experts say the minty oil can also be a "miracle cure" for some other ills aggravated by modem stress.
DONNA'S MIRACLE
"My Headache Goes Away Faster"
"It is better than Tylenol, including Tylenol Extra Strength," says Donna Lewis, a speech pathologist at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in Texas She has used peppermint oil to cure tension headaches several times, after she learned the remedy was being used successfully in Germany. Depending on her level of stress, sometimes she gets headaches several times a month; sometimes
What's the Evidence?
In Germany, where the therapeutic effects of peppermint oil are widely recognized, researchers were aware that peppermint oil and its main constituent, menthol, are reputed to have analgesic effects when put on the skin. In search of an alternative to headache drugs, they theorized that peppermint might work. After a series of preliminary studies, leading headache researchers at the Neurological Clinic at Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, presented the first clinical proof in 1996 that peppermint oil applied to the forehead does reduce headache pain from tension headaches just as well as a taking a standard dose of 1,000 milligrams of acetaminophen better known as two tablets of Tylenol!
Dr. Hartmut Gebel and colleagues studied forty-one men and women ages eighteen to sixty-five who had suffered tension headaches from one to twenty-two attacks every month for two to forty years. The study was of rigorous design —a so-called randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind crossover study. When a headache struck during the study, each participant used, as instructed, one of three possible remedies-either two capsules of acetaminophen, or a real 10 percent peppermint oil preparation, or a fake solution (placebo) with only a few drops of peppermint, which they spread across their foreheads. They repeated the peppermint oil application again fifteen minutes and a half-hour later. All the subjects used all the remedies at various times in attempts to cure their headaches. They also meticulously, using scientific criteria, recorded the course of each of their headaches for an hour. As astonishing as it may seem, in most subjects, regardless of gender, age, or duration and frequency of headaches, the peppermint oil was just as quick and effective at relieving the head pain as acetaminophen Headache intensity began to diminish after fifteen minutes with both
"We find that patients can benefit from peppermint oil no matter what their sex, age, and headache history," says Dr. Gebel. However, he notes a few people did not get relief, for unknown reasons. Generally, he says, peppermint oil appears "more effective for those with less frequent and shorter headache attacks." In some persons, taking Tylenol and using peppermint oil worked better than either alone, says Dr. Gebel. Nobody complained of any side effects from the peppermint therapy.
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Jean Carper