It's 4 p.m. You've been squinting at the computer all day. The
phone won't stop ringing and ... here it is again ... that
tightness that wraps around your head and s-q-u-e-e-z-e-s.
Tension headaches are the most common kind of headache,
affecting about 40% of people in a given year. Yet they're also
the most neglected by medical science and the least understood.
That's in part because headache experts seldom see them. "In 20
years of practice, I can count on two hands the number of people
I've seen with tension-type headaches," says David Dodick, a
neurologist with the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. Most sufferers just
tough them out or treat them with over-the-counter pain killers,
which are generally effective. But neurologists warn that taking
such pain relievers more than 10 days a month can cause what's
known as rebound or medication-overuse headaches, which have the
same dull, aching pain as tension headaches themselves. "They
give you temporary relief but they render you vulnerable to
another attack," says Dr