Welcome to the Chinese medicine. With your host Marie Hawkinson Chinese medicine practitioner. Hi, welcome to the Chinese medicine podcast. I'm very Hopkinson. I'm a Chinese medicine practitioner. And today we're going to be talking about headaches and the pain that had to alleviate the pain that you might get from a headache. So you've probably done this before when you've gotten the headache maybe press your temples with one like that. So people sort of line one like going like that on the desk because they're they're in pain and our Natural Instinct. Sometimes is to actually press where the pain is. Press those pressure points. So you can see that I'm here in lovely. Beautiful Melbourne yarra river is behind me. It's beautiful city. It's a bit cold outside. So I'm glad to be nice and cozy warm inside but let's get on with it today. So pain in our head or headache pain, how can we alleviate that pain with acupressure now? What's acupressure? It's pressing the points pressing the acupuncture points. So this is the main point you might have seen being used before. This is called her gu large intestine 4 So her ghost was the pinion the Chinese name of the point and that point is on along the second metacarpal, which is your second finger. And if you feel that you've got a little bone here and just kind of press in that sort of squishy space you or you can use the thumb and your first finger like that and pressing in like that. So you using the pressure of your finger under your hands to sort of push up a little bit and the finger the thumb then to press down into the point now the trick with This point a lot of people say it's between the two fingers. It's more on it's the channel is on the large intestine Channel, which is on along the finger side not on the thumb side. So you need to have it needs to be kind of more here not here not in the web of the finger now with all acupressure. What you should feel is like a tingly a heavy and a key sort of Sensation from pressing the points. Now if you've ever had acupuncture, which is like needling the points it the acupressure should replicate that same kind of feeling so you should have a similar feeling to acupuncture with acupressure. Now for headaches were pain in the head. Sometimes you can just naturally find you that you feel relief by just pressing the pressure points. You might have had like an Indian head massage or some some different kinds of massages where they press on your head scalp acupuncture is like to acupuncture points on the scalp. That's also utilizing the many many many pressure points that are on your head now. You can't press the points too hard in terms of like what would what would be the worst thing that would happen? When you press the points too hard. Well, you get a bruise on that area. And before you got the bruise, it will probably feel uncomfortable. So you usually stop the person would often stop pressing if you get a bruise in that area, then once the bruise goes away, there's usually nothing else that's damaged there unless you I mean, this is just when you simply pressing the points with your own pressure, then that's you know, that's it's nothing. You can kind of help you can't do too much damage to yourself. So you can press away. If you press the wrong spot you not going to you know, put your body out of balance. Let's say by just pressing the wrong point when you're trying to trying to do this. So it's worthwhile just to give it a go give it a try and see if you can alleviate the pain of your headache before you need to go and take painkillers. So acupressure works the best it's the most effective for when you like the suit of the headache starts to start the acupressure. Rather than waiting until it's like a throbbing intense headache or you know, it's so it's so bad. You may need more than just acupressure to stop it if it's been going on for a long long time and it with everything with everything on my channel. I always tell people like don't use YouTube as a replacement for medicine. So if you have a headache there can be lots of reasons why you have headaches headaches can come because you're dehydrated they can come because of caffeine withdrawal you can cut this lots of reasons and if you want to know the reasons in Chinese medicine, I've got another Video on that so you can also put the link to that below you can check that out. But also headaches can be signs of serious health problems in our body like so serious problems. You could have a brain aneurysm you could have lots of different problems in your body and you won't know that the diagnosis unless you go towards a medical practitioner like so an actual GP your medical doctor and when you go to a Chinese medicine doctor and they may refer you to a western medicine doctor. That's the reason why because they don't know they don't have the ability to Give you an MRI scan or whatever is needed to make the diagnosis. So if you're not sure go and see practitioner control why you've got the headache or if your headache persists and you're not and it's not being alleviated, even with with your standards kind of painkillers and things like that. Then that would be a time when you go to a medical professional and get a diagnosis now acupuncture can also be used to relieve headache and there's lots of evidence documenting the treatment of headaches with a Poncho you can occupy Chinese medicine practitioners can treat the pain of the headache at the time. Now, there's lots of different ways. They may go about that. Sometimes they may put some needles in your head. Excuse me. They may put some news in your head. They may put some acupuncture points in your body your hands feet legs arms. That kind of thing. Sometimes acupuncture acupuncture is used along the neck and the back like the upper back to alleviate that tightness and then free up the The flow of blood to the head because that's often the cause of many headaches is just musculoskeletal tightness, but we're mostly focusing on what you can do for your own self today in treating headaches. So you've got pain in your head. You can basically just palpate your head and I suggest you do this technique where you put your fingers in it on your scalp somewhere and you basically just move back and forth and you can see with my as I'm moving my hair lines moving back and forward, that's because we have our skull And then we have the skin that's on top of that and the hair coming out of our skin. And so you'll see that as I'm doing that I'm actually moving the skin is kind of moving being manipulated over the bones. Now your skull bones can move a tiny bit. You won't feel the move by doing this but it's your skull isn't one big bone. It's lots of bones that have basically fuse together like this and this is where you're going to do like a cranial if you see a crane No sacral therapist they often do treatment where they're they're slightly even chiropractors are slightly manipulating those bones or just affecting like in what we call the sutures which is where those two the two aspects of the bones. I'm so using my hands like this because if you if that's kind of what it's like and it's so what you'll see is what you're feeling your head is a little divot like a little sometimes you feel a little wine. So if you're not sure you can just run your Down and going back and forward and you might feel I can feel a little little. Little divot in there and so often that he knows along those lines are where many acupuncture points are and often you'll find in your head that is one or two spots that feel incredibly painful when you've got a headache like you might press and you might feel all that really hurts like it's but at the same time it's like a good feeling it feels like a good pain. So what do you do with that? Well often you can it's like a little acting like a little trigger. In your head, you can press press press it. Like just like I am now I'm just basically using one finger or two fingers to kind of just press in on that spot, press it in. Maybe if you want to go even harder like make it stronger. You can manipulate your fingers. I'm doing this very obviously but just kind of like this back and forward sort of in those spots and often with these kind of pressure points. You need to hold them for a bit of time. So, let's say you have your your head throbbing you're in a lot of pain you can kind of press the points like that. I'm mostly using my thumb's there, but I'm just resting my fingers on there. If your thumbs get tired, you can use the knuckles of your of your thumbs there at the side. So you can kind of just press in there and the other point that's often used is just at your temple. So this is one point here on your gall bladder Channel gallbladder one, but just back from that you have this soft area here now just use the pads of your fingers real gentle really gently to kind of just massage in there and you shouldn't feel any kind of title. Um Pine or anything like that. We just that gentle pressure. But you can press in a little bit harder. They don't want to press too hard because you certainly wouldn't want to press. Yeah. Don't press too hard. But you can just press gently a lot of people like to combine acupressure with essential oil use. So the oil that I would recommend you use for headaches is lavender oil now if you're allergic to Lavender or you've got other reasons why you can't use lavender than don't use it, but You can just use a carrier oil which is like I mean, you could just use cooking oil out of the cupboard if that's all that you've got a high-quality olive oils better than just standard vegetable oil. You could also use in massage therapy. They often use almond oil. Jojoba oil those kind of oils are nice oils to use when your skid soybean oil can be used and so you just using a little bit of oil to mix with the essential oils and then apply that to those areas. Just like that. So that's the first one I would do on your face. That is called Taeyang T AI y Ang and it's kind of just in that spot there and then Yin Tang here. So the way you use this point here, which is just what most people would consider their third II error. So just between you two eyes at the bridge of just above the bridge of your nose. Now, when you press here, if you just press you can press with your thumb and press with your finger. It's not as as effective as if you actually pinch it. So if you pinch that area pinching the skin together and is actually more effective because you're just you're really getting into that little bit of muscle that's there and printing those that muscle together rather than just pressing down on to the Bone. So that's a little tip that will make that so you can basically pinch and on your face you tend to want to press as generally much lighter than on like on your body. So on here on the her go point or any other points on your hands or feet Compress a little hot or not on your face one is you don't want really what most people want to bruise on their face. I don't want to bruise on my face. So it press lighter and also your face is more sensitive. Your skin is more a lot more sensitive, especially if you do have even more sensitive than average sensitive skin, then you can just press it very lightly. If you've got thinner skin. You don't want it to sort of tear your skin by pressing things to heart. So there the first points I would start with this one is just massaging your own scalp like this going around and just feeling mmm. Does that feel good as a Kind of some of the oh, wow. There's a really tight pop spot. They oh, wow, that really hurts. Okay so find those little trigger point. So it's really and you can just press them like a basically just pressing in so them holding them if I press two hands together, or I press in it and I can actually lean my head into my hand. So if I'm really tired I could less rest my hand on the desk and just sort of and you see people do that naturally just they do it because they're kind of in pain. It's just a natural way to kind of try to alleviate the pain. I'm so that's a good thing. You can try. The other ones you could do is on the back of your neck. So here this is called a full choke or bladder 20. So just behind your neck. So how do you find that point on yourself? Well, okay go to your ear. And just if you feel behind your ear, you'll feel this bony protrusion sort of there and they're going little bit further back and you might feel that protrusion of the muscle in a ridgy kind of way here. So that points in between two muscles once your That I caught a mess toward muscle or something just caught sem. It's got a really long time and then your trapezius. So the trapezius is the one at the very back. I'll just turn around here so you can kind of see. Do it like that I turn around here. You can see that's the point there. So you can use your two thumbs in between there. Now. What I'm doing is I'm just holding here on my head a tiny bit, but mostly pressing in here. And another little trick is then to lean your head towards the the pot the point and that's a that's a super effective point to do and that's called gallbladder 20. So that's a really nice point to kind of press. Press right in there and you can just get in there again if you get the wrong spot, but it's feeling good to you. You're not going to make it worse by pressing the wrong spot in those areas and you might even feel that through that SCM that Center clutter mastoid muscle that you have a bit of tightness that if it comes sort of round to the front here, you can see in the other video. I made I was talking about different how different channels like you to stomach her the large intestine Channel how that kind of relates to different areas this area. Here's the gallbladder area in in Chinese medicine a gall bladder channel is relating to the shower Yang channels of the other xiaoyang channel is you're saying ciao. Ciao. So if you've got if this is relieving the pain and you feeling better from pressing that the other aspect that you want to process on your forearm, so how do you find that so just the middle between these two bones you can just massaged that channel up and down here. So there's a lot of points here. So it was right in the middle of your wrist. That's one. Appoint such a for the main one. You probably want to use a center 5 which was two finger spaces apart from the center for sort of here and then a little bit further up now don't be worried so much more go for the channel. So you can just rub the channel. You can just rub literally just rub your thumb up and down you can what in Chinese Master they call Tambor which is like strumming across pressing across the other one that I really like to chat to recommend to people is me see if I've got a little pain or something on this. This desk. No, I don't but what I do have heat I do for pain is pain this please hold them. Here we go. So here's a pen just a standard pen. Okay, so we don't have anything else. So one is you can click it down so that you just have the blunt end there now, that's Two sharp, but you can use that as a little press. Oh now you're not poking it into the skin. But you just using that as a little thing to kind of press into the point, press into the point and you'll get a little very little pain mark on you just a circle payment or often the blunt end of the pen is a good one to use. So this is got the thing that presses the pen up and down. It's going to do that when I am clicking sound is picker, but that's really effective. You can do that. If you want that clicking sound doesn't annoy you too much. Sort of do some massage like that and that brings me to the other aspect which is the bird packing. So I'm going to go down sort of the sand jail Channel, which is kind of like going down my arm. And if you're not sure where these channels are just Google them. It's not that hard Sandow Asin Jiao Sandow is also translated as triple warmer or triple heater. And then the other one is your large intestines are this line intestine for point and if you're really interested in knowing about well, why do those things relate to headaches you can go and watch that headaches video the one I'll put in the description box bit more long-winded more about the Chinese medicine understandings of it and then you could just grab a key or something and just use the key to press. The points that's another thing to do. I often acupressure quite commonly done through the clothing. And so then you can use an Implement like you can even do you can do with you if your thumb or your hands through the clothing? So I hope this video has been useful and helpful to you. If it has then I encourage you to go and seek help with a Chinese medicine practitioner. If you've got ongoing problems with headaches and you want to see if you can find the natural way to treat it. It lots of people look for natural ways to stop pain because they want to get off painkillers or they just don't want to use painkillers on a regular basis. So, you know, there's nothing wrong with Western medicine like in Chinese medicine with a lot of practitioners, you know would use Western medicine on themselves or use Western medicine in some cases and lots of patients who use Chinese medicine use Western medicine as well. But the issue with chronic pain problems is when you're taking pain pills all the time, we're having second. So regularly they can have an impact. On your digestive system on your like on your actual the actual digestion. So you stomach especially anti-inflammatory based ones or the issue. Some people have is just being overloaded in their kidneys or liver because they like working overtime all the time and they might be at the point where they're maxed out on painkillers. Sometimes people get headaches. They've already got another chronic health problem, which is mean they're taking a lot of painkillers already and then they get this other issue and they can't just add in more more pain medicine. So go and see your Chinese medicine practitioner acupuncturist a registered acupuncturist or herbalist. And that way you'll be able to get that specific diagnosis. So these points are all just kind of very general generic point. So when would these be useful maybe if you're traveling and you and you can't get to a practitioner because you're on the airplane or something like that stuck in the airport. You've got a headache you're in a meeting and he just can't get out of that meeting at that moment and you want to try to relieve that pain if you can then these things can be used to help. Finally the other tip. I would give people is try a hot pack. Now often you go for cold. You can you can try either a cold or hot pack but heat expands blood vessels makes blood vessels expand the best place to put the hot pack is on the back of your neck or on the top of your head. And so if you try the sometimes I even put the hot pack on my forehead what that does is it just makes blood vessels expand and then that can often alleviate the pain and at least you could get some symptomatic relief for a little while. So, I hope that this video has been useful and helpful to you and look forward to seeing you again on the next.
Dr Marie Hopkinson, Acupuncturist shows you how to find and use different pressure points to stop headache pain instantly and reduce headaches over time. This episode can be watched on youtube as a video (for full point demonstration) at Chinese Medicine Podcast youtube channel. Pressure point massage can be a natural, drug-free pain relief method. If you are unsure of the cause of your headaches or migraines, please seek advice from your health care practitioner. Headaches can be a symptom of a serious health problem. Do not use youtube as a replacement for real medicine, and seeing your health care practitioner. Please leave a comment below, let us know what points you've tried! While Marie may answer your questions, all answers are not of a professional consultation level - it is impossible to check your pulse through the internet, hence Chinese medicine cannot be practiced properly through the internet. If you have any undiagnosed symptoms, or changes in your health condition The Chinese Medicine Podcast urges you to see your own doctor, GP, Chinese medicine practitioner, acupuncturist or other health professional as appropriate. If it is an emergency call 000 in Australia. If you are unsure if this advice is appropriate for your individual situation ask your own practitioner before applying any diet or lifestyle techniques /concepts discussed in this video. 