Excedrin = Aspirin + Tylenol + Caffeine

It depends on the cause, and your own biology.

Aspirin reduces pain signals but also reduces blood clotting, If your headache is from vasculature issues in and around your brain it’s extra insurance.

Acetaminophen just reduces pain signals in the nervous system. It doesn’t have any secondary advantageous effects but it is easier on your stomach.

Ibuprofen reduces pain signals and also as an anti-inflammatory. So if your headache is caused from minor swelling in the head it’s the obvious choice.

I feel like at least in the US most people tend to overtake ibuprofen when they’d probably be better suited with Tylenol or aspirin.

I’ll go plain old paracetamol which works for me most of the time. If that fails then ibuprofen would be my next choice.

Ibuprofen if I’m at work, but at home I usually take a short nap and have some coffee after, which works better for me.

I’m in too much chronic spinal pain to register a headache. I don’t know why, but the question made me realize I haven’t had a headache in a decade since my broken neck and back. I get to a point where I can’t focus on anything. The anti inflammatory Tylenol Arthritis formula is the most effective by a considerable margin. I don’t have arthritis and am 40. I’ve been on most available pain meds over the last decade, and honestly this one beats most others for me. I used to have headaches, my issues are different but my family basically switched to the same thing too after trying it.

Motrin(Ibuprofen) because it works better for me, assuming the migraine doesn’t cause me to puke it up right after.

Aspirin has never been of value to me and I would only take it if I had a heart attack.

Acetaminophen (Tylenol) if I can’t get it under control without meds but I agree with the other posters about trying to figure out the root cause! For me, the main causes of headaches used to be hormones from the pill until I switched to a different form of birth control (IUD). Nowadays my headaches are mostly dry eye or allergy related so I keep eye drops on hand and take allergy meds and I’m down to headaches once every week or two. Staying hydrated and taking fish oil supplements has also helped my dry eyes.

I prefer paracetamol since ibuprofen can create secondary effects in the gastric system.

Whichever is closest.

Acetaminophen kills your liver. Ibuprofen melts the glue holding your guts together.

What matters right now is your headache.

As other comments have said, deal with the origin of the pain first, THEN…

If it’s bad enough to take meds but not too bad, then one 500mg paracetamol and 200mg ibuprofen (my go to for pain). The paracetamol will generally be one with some caffeine in it.

If it’s a BAD headache, then 900mg aspirin.

I do have a headache hat which is kept in the fridge.

I default to ibuprofen. Feels a little more effective to me than acetaminaphen. I’ve never taken aspirin for pain.

Somewhat in order of action:

• check if I am clenching jaw/grinding my teeth, relax shoulders and neck, center my thoughts, lower blood pressure and pulse

• thoroughly flush sinuses (like spend 20 minutes or more at least)

• drink lots of water/electrolytes and caffeine

• reduce sensory input: dark quiet room with comfortable seating

• double dose of Sudafed and Diclofenac sodium

• jump into traffic

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Used to be ibuprofen but I gained an allergy to it so now it’s acetaminophen (Tylenol)

Well, I’m not in a situation where I can go otc for headaches. I’m already using acetaminophen (paracetamol for the brits) non stop for chronic pain, and I have to save ibuprofen for stuff that never responds to other pain control methods because I’m an old fuck and I’m not supposed to take it at all, and it causes problems when I ignore that and take it anyway.

Luckily, my headaches almost always stem from stress and/or muscle tension in my neck, so it’s very rare they don’t respond to non chemical methods, and I happen to have prescription meds that are prn for those things if I want/need.

But, for headaches, I used to find caffeine more effective than analgesics, nsaid or otherwise. Even when I wasn’t drinking caffeine regularly (which means I know that it wasn’t just caffeine withdrawal causing the headache to begin with), a cup of coffee usually got rise of a headache faster and more thoroughly than NSAIDs.

But it was usually acetaminophen that would be my first pick when I went the OTC pill route. Less likely to irritate my already irritating bowel syndrome issues.

Tbh though, none of the OTC analgesics are great at getting rid of a headache. Some of the older studies and double blind tests I saw put them about the same as placebo for headaches, though that’s been years since I looked up anything about it.