Migraine Relief W/o Meds: A Huge List of Stuff to Help Your Headache

The ultimate guide to stuff that might make migraines more manageable

Stuff to help your migraine… that you can get over the counter?! Yeeeah, seems like a “I’ll believe it when I see(/feel) it” situation. For my entire life I’ve dealt with migraine disease, tension headaches, and sinus headaches so bad I had one surgery and need another. I have tried nearly every treatment or thing there is to help my migraines and other headaches, and I will admit, most of what I’ve tried didn’t do jack shit. (Other than deplete my wallet.)

Despite the slog, I have figured out a few things that work for me (like my ever-evolving migraine routine!) and I wanted to put together a master list of items that might make you feel better. I asked my network, my private pain group and my and social media followers what they rely on. Then I used an AI to drill through over a decade of forum posts to see what’s been recommended over and over again.

It’s a big list and not everything is going to work for everyone. But migraines are miserable, and the worse the pain, the more it seems worthwhile to try everything you can.

Here’s an outline– I tried to organize them by sense. Sorta.

• Heat / Cold therapy items
  • Wet Heat
  • Dry Heat
  • Cold Options
• Sight / Vision related items
  • Migraine Glasses
  • Lights
  • Blackout curtains
• Hearing / Sound stuff for headaches
  • Attenuating earplugs for sound
  • Barometric earplugs for weather changes
  • Noise-cancelling headphones
  • White noise machine / apps
• Massage
  • General Massage
  • Scalp Massage
  • Head, eye & neck massage
  • Massage Pillows
• Mouth & Consumable Stuff

Preface: Support Small Businesses & Artisans As Much As Possible!

Listen, I link to amazon products because they make it easy to do so. But it’s always better if you can put that money towards a small business, especially a local one, someone handmaking whatever thingamajig you need to help your headache. Support artisans and small businesses!

Types of heat and how they can help headaches

Many people I know find that cold or heat can help them avoid or treat a migraine. There are different types of heat: wet heat, which comes from heating pads made of rice of clay, may work better or worse for you than the dry heat from an electric blanket.

For my migraines, fibromyalgia and general tension headaches, I find wet heat to be far more helpful than dry. I can also speak to how much infared– specifically, ultrasound– helped relax my spasming trapezoid muscles near the beginning of my health journey. Check out specific heat-up-able stuff to help your migraine after the infographic.

Heat Therapy For Your Headache: Zap it!

Microwavable items tend to give off wet heat. That lets it penetrate more deeply, but also means you have to keep reheating it as it cools off. (See the infographic for more pros and cons!) You have so many options here:

•  Bed Buddy is the most basic heat pack, filled with organic materials that you throw in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Off-brand versions work just fine.
• Lower back microwavable heat pad
• Clay heating pad (which will stay hot/cold for longer than grain-based pads, but eventually dries out).
• Hot water bottle. There are some cute covers for these! Will having a hot water bottle that looks like a turtleneck sweater with a fox on it help my headache? What about ones with covers shaped like teddy bears or dinosaurs? No, no, and no, but it WILL significantly increase the cuteness quotient of my room!)
• The kid (or kid at heart) in your life will love a stuffed animal that can be heated up. Some of these are weighted (good for people on the autism spectrum and who have anxiety or ADHD) and some are scented, so make sure you know exactly what you’re buying. If anybody wants to buy me this adorable lil Axolotl, well, I wouldn’t say no.
• Hand warmers (the one-use kind for your pockets)
• Weighted Neck & Shoulder Heating Pad: Targets neck and shoulder areas with heat. Needs to be plugged in, but advertises “wet heat.”

Plug Into Heated Headache Help

If it plugs in, it’s apt to give you a dry heat, so be aware if that’s something that makes a difference for your headache. But the fact that it plugs in means that the heat is constant and you don’t have to keep reheating it like you would a rice or clay pack.

• Electric blankets –SO many options here, from somewhat bare bones (here’s one on sale!) to super luxe. I’m personally a sucker for a good pattern, whether it’s stripes or plaid.
• Wearable electric blanket with pockets for your feet (Mom, if you’re reading this, please forget this bullet point, it might be your Christmas gift this year…)
• Electric heated neck and back massager: it heats, it kneads, just don’t expect it to make you bread.
• Here’s a cordless version that wraps around your neck

Chill out, migraine mate

But heat is not the be-all-end-all when it comes to helping your headache: cold makes a bigger difference for many people with migraines. Luckily, many of the above items can be thrown in the freezer! Use ’em as a cold pack on your temples, occipital bulges or anywhere else your migraine’s winning the battle. However, a lot of items like this have the cooling element as an afterthought, so here are a couple of things to consider for both hot and cold treatments.

• I’ve recently had multiple friends singing the praises of a cooling cap… it can go hot or cold, blocks light and has some light compression. Haven’t tried it yet but I’m intrigued! My friend recommended this one.
• Be Kool patches: little disposable forehead cooling patches 
• Cooling towels (I’ve personally never noticed these making much of a difference, but some people swear by them.)
• Mini-fan. If you can’t keep your space as cool as you like, at least you can sit in front of a fan. My multi-day hospital stay last summer would have been much more miserable without it. Make sure it either hangs around your neck or has bendable legs so you don’t have to continually hold it up.

I hear migraines are the worst

… in part because they make your hearing so damn sensitive. But there’s a ton of related stuff to help your headache, both to prevent it and to try to get it to go the hell away.

• Attenuating Ear Plugs: Reduce noise. There’s a huge range in these:
  • the cheapest foam, that just block noise
  • Similarly, some are designed for musicians and such to let them hear the music without damaging their hearing. (make sure they’re rated ER20 or up!)
  • Nicer earbuds/headphones may have this as a built-in option (see below).
• Noise-canceling headphones: There are two different kinds of noise cancellation, passive and active. Passive noise isolation uses physical design to block out sounds, while active noise-canceling headphones detect external sounds and then produce opposing sound waves that effectively cancel out those noises. So headphones that offer both kinds, and that sit over your ears, are going to have the best noise cancellation of all audio options.
• Noise Cancelling / Mitigating Earbuds: But sometimes you have to participate in the world despite a migraine. There are a lot of newish options when it comes to earbuds that offer noise cancellation or let in certain types of ambient noise while blocking others. It’s a whole rabbit-hole / blog post of its own! But some good options for noise cancellation are:
  • Good overall: Bose QuietComfort Ultra
  • Good for comfort: Jabra Elite 10 v 2
  • Good on a budget: JLab JBuds NC 3 True Wireless
  • Good for iOS: Airpods Gen 2 (I have these, I love these)
  • Good new product: Loop Experience Plus
  • But there are a ton of other options too.

• Weather/barometric pressure earplugs: reduce migraines caused by weather change.  WeatherX is my gold standard.
• Need white noise to sleep? (I do!) Your choices range from units like these to roughly 12 billion different apps. And if you have AirPods, iOS has a built-in white noise function in the settings! Check out my posts on sleep hygiene and bedtime routines for more about getting some damn sleep.

Peering Through the Headache Fog

“Although photophobia is not usually as incapacitating as headache pain itself, the inability to endure light can be disabling.”

Rami Burstein, the HMS John Hedley-Whyte Professor of Anaesthesia at Beth Israel Deaconess and lead author of the study referenced in “Green Light for Migraine Relief”

Light-filtering glasses can be a game-changer for those who suffer from headaches and migraines. As someone who has personally experienced the benefits, I highly recommend investing in a pair. Here’s an exhaustive runthrough on the science behind them, and migraine glasses in general.

• I’ve been using my Axons Migraine Glasses since I got them in a swag bag volunteering at the very first RetreatMigraine a few years ago. (Did y’all know that I work for the U.S. Pain Foundation and edit their magazine INvisible Project? It’s true!) Anyway, they have become an essential tool during my migraine episodes.
• Other high-quality migraine glasses include FL-41, Theraspecs, or Avulux. 
• But they ain’t cheap. If those are out of your price range, check out the extremely affordable options at Zenni. While I wouldn’t call them exactly equivalent, they do have an entire line of blue-light-blocking glasses called “Blokz.” It’s better than nothing! (If you buy anything from Zenni, please go through this affiliate link so I can earn possibly a nickel!)

Lamps, Lighting and Life Indoors

• Some people swear by these Himalayan Salt Lamps: they look cool and may also work to cleanse the air. If essential oils are your thing, many will do double duty as a diffuser!
• A dimmable touch lamp is a good idea with or without the salt. You don’t have to fumble with a cord or search for a remote, just touch the dang thing.
• Likewise, you can buy smart bulbs for your home that you can control from your phone or using a home assistant like Alexa.
• Blackout curtains: Essential for sleep and a great way to to help your migraine on days when the sun’s rays seem to actually penetrate through your skull.
• Sunlight therapy can do wonders for seasonal depression and there are some cute options to help you out! Some are shaped like lamps, others like circles, and the rest are just flat surfaces beaming that light your way.
• Most of us could use Vitamin D supplements as well, hiding as we do from the sun when migraine-ing. (Or, for those of us in the midst of a Texas summer, “hiding from the hell outside between 11 am and 9 pm.”)

Ah, there’s the rub

Whether it’s a tension headache or a proper migraine, massage items can go a long way in prevention and making them more manageable when they do land. Heck, sometimes my migraines are caused by my tension! But whatever causes them, my head always gets very tender in very specific spots during a migraine. If you haven’t managed to pick up a live-in masseuse from the Boyfriend Store yet, check out the following options.

Overall Massage Options

• Manual Trigger Point Neck & Back Massager: The company that originally created these is called Theracane, though there are now tons of imitators. A weird-shaped thing that is absolutely invaluable, especially if you are a single person. For extra oomph, add in some
  • Icy Hot
  • Biofreeze
  • Tiger Balm
• Along the same lines, an acupressure mat lets you take it as slow as you need.
• Massage gun: While the gold standard here is a Theragun, here’s always a massage gun on sale somewhere. Get one with as many interchangable tips as you can… honestly, it’s worth it to splurge and not buy the absolute cheapest option.
• Wand massager (sometimes called ‘personal massager’): Yes, you can use these for… other things… too, but it primarily helps relax tense muscles and ease migraine pain. If you can afford a Hitachi Magic Wand, it’s one of those brand names that mean something… but knockoffs are cheap and do the job almost as well.
• Gua sha massage tools are just weird shaped little stones you can use to rub on sore spots. They’re cheap, easy, and way better options than anything you could jury-rig. Buy a set that comes with a jade roller, put them all in the freezer before use and they’ll REALLY help your headache! And who knows, it might help your wrinkles too! But no promises.

The Range of Scalp Massagers

Speaking of scalp massagers, there are many different kinds, from the cheapest of the cheap to some pricey futuristic-ass shit. (That’s the technical term.) Your options include:

• These “personal head massagers” (above) look silly, but if 1. you have a migraine and 2. they help, then honestly, who cares. There are a million versions, but you should buy this one purely because I love the promo images they used. (The dog, he looks so happy!)
• Silicone “scalp massagers” are often marketed as beauty tools, to help with getting hair and scalp completely free of product residue, but migraines are definitely another use case. Basic ones are super cheap, but once you start adding motors and other bells & whistles, the prices rise accordingly.

Then you get into the really hardcore stuff. (None of which I have ever tried or known anyone who has tried.)

• This futuristic hairbrush massages your scalp AND has a spot for essential oils
• Stuff like this massage helmet LOOK cool as hell, and I’ll admit to being intrigued (eye, neck and head massage, and heat, with an app to control it? Yes please.)
• There are also a zillion straight-up eye massagers out there. Just make sure it has temp control and read the reviews, because there’s a lot of poorly-made crap from China out there (that goes for everything on this list, actually, but especially anything mechanical).

A Pillow That Does The Work

Then of course you’ve got massage pillows. Massage pillows that help your headaches come in shapes for upper back, neck, and pretty much every other configuration out there, and every person gets sore and tight in a different place, so I’m not going to go into them in depth. Just know that since they plug in, they will produce a dry heat (see infographic) and remember, don’t overdo it! It can happen more quickly than you think when it feels good and you’re just sitting there with something else on your mind.

Drive a lot? Get a fancy-ass seat cover that offers both massage and heat (and probably twelve other things as well). As we covered above, sometimes that heat can make the difference in kicking a migraine– and something to massage my tense traps on a chilly morn? Sold.

Mouthing off about migraines

• Masks: They don’t just protect you from COVID-19 and other germs: they help shield you from all sorts of things that might cause or worsen migraines. While N-95s are best, any mask will provide some protection from breathing in headache-aggravating stuff like pollution, dust or way, way too much old-lady perfume. I usually wear one of these particulate-filtering VogMask bad boys, though I wish I had the space invaders one…
• Mouth Guard for Nighttime Teeth Grinding: If your dentist tells you you grind your teeth at night, you should listen: it’s probably contributing to your migraines, too. There are options here: super cheap & disposable, ones you mold at home, and others that are sent off for professional molding, but the gold standard is always going to be one that your dentist custom makes for you. (Just don’t, hypothetically, leave it anywhere a dog can get to it. They’re pricy.)

Speaking of other OTC options

I’ll admit I don’t know a ton about supplements for migraines, but I sure do know about other OTC (over the counter) products that promise relief. (Some of these have already been mentioned above.) Everyone is different, and you should always check with your doc before mixing new supplements with whatever meds you’re on already. All that said, it might be worth checking out these topical or consumable options to avoid or minimize the pain of a migraine or other headache.

• Icy Hot
• Biofreeze
• Tiger Balm
• peppermint oil roll-ons
• Menthol patches/salve/roll on
• capsaicin cream (also good for neuropathy)
• magnesium oil spray (and magnesium supplements in general)
• CBD topicals, medical cannabis or other cannabis-derived treatment (though that’s a whole post in and of itself)
• Vicks VapoRub
• White flower oil
• Be Kool migraine patches
• Vitamin D supplements

It’s the end of the list. I hope it’s the end of your headache, too.

The journey to find effective OTC stuff to help your migraine can be long and frustrating, but it’s worth the effort to discover what works for you. From heat and cold therapies to innovative gadgets and simple over-the-counter solutions, there’s a wide array of options to explore.

Remember, what helps one person’s migraine might not work for another, so don’t be discouraged if some methods don’t provide relief. Keep experimenting, consult with your healthcare provider, and most importantly, be patient with yourself.

With persistence and the right combination of treatments, you can develop a personalized toolkit of stuff to help your migraine and improve your quality of life. Keep advocating for your health and stay hopeful– you never know what’s going to make a huge difference.