A headache is pain or discomfort in the head, scalp, or neck. Serious causes of headaches are extremely rare. Most people with headaches can feel much better by making lifestyle changes, learning ways to relax, and occasionally by taking medications.Causes of Headache
Brain tissue itself does not feel pain, but other kinds of tissue in and around the brain can feel pain. For example, muscles in the scalp, face, or neck can contract and become painful, and blood vessels in the brain and face can swell, causing pain in the muscles and tissue on the skull.
It’’s often not clear what causes tension-type headaches. Anxiety and stress are often associated with these types of headaches, but do not necessarily cause them. Tension-type headaches are twice as common in women as in men. They are more common in people whose parents, brothers or sisters also have headaches.
The exact cause of cluster headaches is not known. Many experts believe that cluster headaches and migraine headaches have a common cause that begins in the trigeminal nerve, a nerve that carries sensations from the head to the brain and that ends in the blood vessels that surround the brain
Symptoms & Signs
Tension headaches are the most common type of primary headache. As many as 90% of adults have tension headaches. Tension headaches are more common among women than men.
Migraine headaches are the second most common type of primary headache. An estimated 28 million people in the US have migraine headaches. Migraine headaches affect children as well as adults. Before puberty, boys and girls are affected equally by migraine headaches, but after puberty more women than men have them. Migraine often goes undiagnosed or is misdiagnosed as tension or sinus headaches.
Cluster headaches are a rare but important type of primary headache, affecting mainly men. The average age of cluster headache sufferers is 28-30 years, although headaches may begin in childhood.
The pain of a migraine headache usually begins gradually, intensifies over minutes to one or more hours, and resolves gradually at the end of the attack. The headache is typically dull, deep, and steady when mild to moderate in severity; it becomes throbbing or pulsatile when severe. Migraine headaches are worsened by rapid head motion, light, sneezing, straining, constant motion, or physical exertion; many migraine sufferers try to get relief by lying down in a darkened, quiet room. In 60 to 70 percent of people, the pain occurs on only one side of the head. In adults, a migraine headache usually lasts a few hours, but can last from four to 72 hours.
Treating and Preventing Headaches
Cluster headaches respond poorly to over-the-counter medications. Oxygen therapy and prescription medications such as lithium,* calcium channel blockers (used to treat high blood pressure), steroids, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and some anti-migraine drugs, as well as others, can help in many cases. If you suspect that you have cluster headaches, you should check with your doctor.
Sinus headaches usually require antibiotics or other treatments to clear up the infection. Once the infection is gone, the headache will go away, too. Until the infection gets better, taking an over-the-counter painkiller can help ease the pain.
For the treatment of this disease, it depends on the type of headache, analgesics - ranging from aspirin to codeine or meperidine - may provide symptomatic relief.
Other measures treatments include identification and elimination of causative factors and, possibly, psychotherapy for headaches caused by emotional stress.
If you have chronic tension headaches, then it may also require muscle relaxants.
For the treatment of migraine headaches, then you should be used ergotamine alone or with caffeine.
