Sometimes the pressure from glasses can help with sinus headaches - does anyone else experience this?
It's Spring here in Australia which means hayfever for me and more frequent usually minor sinus pain. I often wear sunglasses outside but I have 20/20 vision (afaik) so I don't have prescription glasses. I did get some cheap blue-light glasses a few years ago in case they helped with tiredness/eye strain/sleep hygiene when I was using screens late at night. I recently noticed that wearing them when I have sinus pain helps alleviate the pain a little. I've noticed before that pinching the bridge of my nose can help especially when the pain is bad, so I suppose it makes sense that the glasses do something similar.
This is my first post, and usually when I'm curious about something I look it up, but I only really found people talking about how glasses can cause headaches when they're ill-fitting. So I thought I'd ask around here to see if anyone else has experienced this or otherwise was interested in the topic. And maybe this will help someone in a similar situation.
The bridge of the nose and slightly north where it meets your eye socket is a frequently cited pressure point for helping alleviate headache pain so I could see how that might help with sinus issues as well. As someone who gets frequent headaches I've found the best thing that works for me is taking two #2 pencils, eraser side up, and massaging that pressure point in small circles. I'm sure it looks absolutely insane but it works!
While I have no issues with headaches, I think that area is around where you pinch/massage when trying to help open and drain your sinuses. It might help to look up "pressure points to drain your sinuses".
Bodies are pretty strange. Thanks for the advice about the Valsalva manoeuvre, I’ll try it out when I’m headachy and see how it goes.
For me the pain is usually temporary, though it can be pretty bad/distracting for a short time. Since it can accompany other hayfever symptoms I expect it’s mostly due to that, though it is important to be vigilant in case of more rare serious illness of course. As an odd note, I’ve noticed that sometimes hayfever can make my nose blocked, but if it doesn’t make it blocked it’ll make my nose runny and I’m more likely to get sinus pain.
This is a bit tangential so feel free to mark me off-topic, but how do you tell when something's a sonus headache versus another kind of headache? Maybe I've just never experienced a true sinus headache or maybe I lump it together with other things but I see people referring to them as a distinct thing a lot lately and I'm curious how you tell.
Hmm. I suppose sinus is just the best way for me to describe where I feel the pain. I don’t get many headaches, but I notice when it’s pain around my sinuses the pressure at my nose bridge can help. No clue if they are technically called sinus headaches, I used the term here more descriptively than prescriptively.
Oh yeah no I'm not trying to say you're using the word wrong, I just wanted to take this opportunity to ask bc I didn't really know what a sinus headache was or felt like.
Oh yeah, I guess my response was really just ‘I’m not sure, sorry’. I think of it as a sinus headache when the pain is only in my upper nose/behind my eyes and nowhere else.