The Little Things that Affect Your Health

We often want a magic pill to end our illness, but that's just fanciful thinking

The mental and physical pain you suffer cannot be resolved with a magic pill—despite what drug ads may suggest. Fizkes/Shutterstock

Every several weeks, I get this funky headache. Ground zero is a knot on the left side of my upper back. It tightens up and then it gets dull and achy, and after a while it becomes downright painful all the way up into my forehead. It has many of the qualities of a migraine—one-sided, beginning at a specific focal point, accompanied by chills, and pretty intense.