Homemade Headache Salve

I get headaches on a fairly regular basis. Most of the time it's just a small headache. This is a huge contrast to my partner whose headaches have an 85% chance of turning into a debilitating migraine if not treated quickly enough.

I don't really know what causes my headaches. Sometimes it's a lack of food. Sometimes it's a lack of water (which I hate most since I'm usually good about drinking enough water). Sometimes it's stress. Sometimes it's nothing identifiable.

Since I get them more often than I'd like, I'm disinclined to head straight for medicine. I try eating or drinking water. I try to wait them out. When I'm busy at work or I can tell it's not going away anytime soon or I just feel too tired to fight it, I'll take medicine. It's not my favorite thing to do, but I'll take it faster than my partner will.

I found a recipe for a homemade headache salve. It uses coconut oil and essential oils. Since I actually had everything the recipe called for, I decided to make some. When I was talking to my best friend about it, she said if I added beeswax, it could help keep the salve solid at higher temperatures. I actually had to go buy some beeswax, but it wasn't too expensive, I'd been thinking about getting some for a while, and now I have more than I can use this year.

I'd like to state that I didn't in fact measure anything. I'd guess I only made about 2 or 3 oz of the stuff total. My ratios are probably wrong, though.

The first thing I had to do was melt the coconut oil and beeswax. I stuck them in a glass ramekin and put that in a bowl with boiling water. As I suspected, though, the coconut oil melted and the beeswax didn't.

I ended up having to microwave it all when I determined the beeswax wasn't going to melt without more direct heat. By the time I pulled it out of the microwave after 30 seconds to a minute, it was practically spitting.

The original recipe called for using different kinds of oils depending on which type of headache I get most. Sadly, I can't identify which type is most common for me. I ended up using peppermint, eucalyptus, and lavender oils so I didn't have to worry. I didn't really count how many drops of each oil I used, but I think it was something like 6 or 8. I don't know that I was supposed to use that much, but the beeswax smell was a bit hard to cover plus the hot oil seemed to absorb the scent more than expected.

Here's a picture of it after it cooled a bit and was transferred into its permanent jar.

I used it a bit at this stage, but it was still so warm that I ended up rubbing liquid oil on my temples and the back of my neck. It wasn't horrible, but I wager a solid salve would be less messy.

This is a picture of the salve after it's had almost 24 hours to cool. I put it in the fridge for a bit to start the cooling, but I left it on the counter for at least 12 hours because I didn't want to shock it too much.

Since I don't work with beeswax ever, I don't actually know if I put enough in to stabilize the salve. I guess I'll find out this summer.

My favorite thing about this is that it's in a tiny 4 oz jar, which means I can take it with me to work fairly easily.

The headache I had when I made the salve didn't really go away until the next morning after I ate breakfast and had some coffee. I'm hoping it came about because I was sick, I hadn't eaten fantastically the previous few days, and my partner had been away for a few days on a trip.

I don't know how much I believe this stuff will work, but I'm willing to try it since almost all the ingredients were already at my home and this couldn't hurt to try. I'll let you know how it goes.