Cycling and Headaches

Being prone to migraines and tension headaches, I make sure to carry pain meds as part of the standard dayride kit in my cycling bag. But I've never actually had to use them to treat a headache. In fact, I cannot remember ever having a headache on the bike. This realisation came to me a couple of nights ago, when a quiet evening of movie-watching at a friend's house ended in a brain-piercing, want-to-bang-head-against-wall type of headache the likes of which I haven't experienced in some time. It felt mild enough to ignore at first, and after a trip to the kitchen for a glass of water I settled back on the sofa amidst the other lounging bodies in the darkened living room. But when the film was over and the lights came on, the real pain began. Behind the left eye. Throbbing. Spreading with a slow horrible pressure toward the back of my head. I was getting a lift home in a friend's car, a 25 minute drive. In the course of those minutes things went from bad to worse, and I'm pretty sure that my face came to resemble Munch's The Scream in its grotesque contortions. Even after I got home and took a hefty dose of headache medication, it took an hour of lying perfectly still in a dark room for the storm in my head to calm. But it was while writhing in the passenger's seat with the window rolled down that it hit me: I have countless memories of being stuck in a car with debilitating headaches - but none of having a headache on a bike.

Certainly all the ingredients have been there. Long, windblown hours under direct sun. Physical exhaustion and dehydration. Hasty departures without morning coffee. Tightly adjusted helmets. Tail lights of cyclists in front of me shining directly into my eye on group rides. And yet it has never happened. I've had headaches after bike rides and before bike rides, just never during. And I've had headaches during other forms of exercise - namely running (well, attempting to run). Could there be something special about cycling that prevents them?

According to a neurologist friend, that is not impossible. The research on headaches and exercise is mixed. In some instances exercise can actually induce headaches ("exertional headaches"), and there appears to be a higher risk of this with high-impact exercise and weight lifting. In other instances, exercise can be used therapeutically to treat headaches, including migraines. These would be exercises that are low impact and promote relaxation and tension-reducing posture alignment. Yoga is probably the most typical. But it is plausible that cycling could play that role as well - depending on how it makes us feel and how our body is positioned on the bike. And I suppose all that fresh air couldn't hurt either.

Whatever the reason for it, I am thankful to be headache-free when I pedal. I will continue to carry pain meds on rides, just in case. And I hope to continue not needing them.