As the title says, how is the best way to deal with Occipital Neuralgia when it flares up? Does anyone here have a good solution that works better than any of the crap that doctors or online medical sites have? For my training, it's primarily aggravated on my press and my chin-up work where the traps are heavily involved (like shrugs). Curiously deadlifts don't seem to aggravate it even though I can tell they're stressed and used too.

A bit of history, I'm 59 and will be 60 on 9/11. About 16 years ago or so, I suffered a neck injury on my right side and hyperexteded my neck and right shoulder. I didn't completely tear anything but had partial tears on several of the tendons and ligaments on my right side, and they never healed back up quite right, so all the nerves on my right side of my head are frequently pinched and irritated. It took nearly 10 years of terrible doctors and shitty coverage from Tricare, until I finally got a good diagnosis, from VA Fayetteville. I won't go into all the details and symptoms I dealt with the first 6 months or so after the injury; they sucked. I'm mostly concerned with what I deal with since the neck "healed". It gives me the equivalent of migraines, and a very stiff neck on my right side, sometimes so stiff I can't rotate my neck from side to side. Also, as I'm getting older, and losing elasticity in my ligaments/tendons, the ones on my right side won't always loosen or return to "resting" position if I rotate either direction for a while. Also, cold or dry air bothers my neck most, so the upcoming hot and humid summers here will be a glad relief. When it hits bad it's usually around for 2-3 days.

Most days I have to take about 400-600mg Ibuprofin in the morning and again in the evening. But some days are so bad 800mg Ibuprofin won't help - and I'm probably a very unpleasant person those days, but I don't dare ask my friends and coworkers. Those days I find it very hard to train or motivate myself to do much anything. One of my goals in training is to hopefully be able to work through some of this and restore some sense of normalcy to my neck and cut out or do away with the Ibuprofin.

So if anyone has a good solution for recovery exercises or stretches or such that work to relieve the pain when it's severe so I can train through it, please let me know, I'm all ears. Thanks.