What is a headache?

Headache is a condition in which you
suffer from pain especially in your head with pain in the back of the
head, above the eyes, and back of the upper neck. Headache is a very common health
problem. Headaches can be mild but they can cause some severe pain which can
make it pretty difficult to concentrate on any task and also can make it hard to
do some of your daily work.

Approximately ¾ of adults from age 65-18 had a headache, and almost 30%
of the population have migraine.  Almost 7 out of 10 people have a headaches once every year. Headaches can be medicated by doing some changes in your
lifestyle and also by medicine.

 Causes of headaches:

The pain you usually feel when you have a headache it comes from the mixed of signals between your blood vessels, your brain, and nearby nerves. Nerves present in your blood vessels and head muscles switch and pain signals send to the brain.

 Common
causes: stress, illness, genetics, physical injury, environment, migraine,
high blood pressure, depression, or anxiety.

Treatment of headaches:

Your doctor can help you with the
appropriate and better treatment if you tell him the symptoms, and headache are not
the cause of significant illness, but some causes can require serious emergency
treatment. Your treatment needs depend on many things, like what type of
headache you are having, how often it happens, and what is it causes. Like some of headache do not need any treatment.

According to my research there are almost 150
types of headaches. Generally headaches are classified by cause:

·
Primary headache

·
Secondary headache

Primary headaches:

 Primary headache is the condition when you
have pain in your head. In other words it’s not the symptom of having kind of
illness or allergies. The result of these headaches is the problem due to head
and neck. The main cause of primary headache is due to over activity of nerves,
blood vessels, muscles of neck and head, brain chemical or specific are of the
brain. Some people may carry due to genes.

Common primary headaches:

·
Tension-type headache:

·
TAC (trigeminal autonomic
Cephalalgia), cluster headache and paroxysmal hemicranias

·
Migraine

Now here I will explains some of common
primary headaches:

1.   Tension-type headache:

According to complaint it’s the
feeling of contraction, tightness, or pressure. This pain may affect the frontal,
temporal and occipital muscles.

Tension-type headaches, characterized
by the pain which is from mild to moderate in severity, and bilaterally
distributed.

Cause:

The main cause of tension-type
headache is not understandable. The main cause is to be seemed that it occur
due to muscular tension and stress like emotional crisis, fatigue, and
menstruation. Other similar symptoms may be seen by the patients who have
issues of drug-related headache, hypertension, or hyperthyroidism.

Treatment:

 A person who have tension-type headache he
should avoid from trigger factors like alcohol, improving sleep patterns,
taking more exercise, using relaxation techniques or other strategies of
stress-coping. Drug treatments such as aspirin, paracetamol, or NSAIDs and
other caffeinated-drugs should be avoided.

2.   Cluster headache:

Cluster headache
is one of the most painful types of headache. In this type of headache person
have non-throbbing headache which cause burning pain in or around your eyes and
head. In this type of headache you may experience tear in your eyes and produce
rhinorrhea (running nose) or nasal congestion. Cluster headache can occur more
than once a day or it may occur every day. This type of headache is rare in age
of men from 20-40.

Cause:

The dilation of
blood vessels the one which supply blood to our brain and face is the main
cause of cluster headache. The occurrence of dilation is unknown, but pressure
applied to the trigeminal nerves is due to dilation. It may cause due to sudden
release of the histamine chemicals, which fight serotonin/allergens and mood
regulation. Hypothalamus, a small area in the brain which regulates body
temperature, sleep, releases of hormones and blood pressure are responsible.

Treatment:

Cluster headache can be prevented by
using medication. In some cases when you don’t get better by using treatment
doctor recommend surgery. Pain medication gives you relief once the pain is
started in your head this treatment may includes; breathing 100% oxygen,
triptan medication, DHE (dihydroergotamine) is usually taken with sumatriptan,
capsaicin cream can be applied on area where you have pain.

3.   Migraine:

It’s a strong type
of headache which often comes with nausea, sensitivity to light and vomiting
which last for days or hours. Migraine is different in everyone in some people
it happens in stages which includes; prodrome, aura, attacks and postdrome.

Cause:

Doctors don’t know
the main cause of migraine headache, but they relate it with the changes in the
brain and to genes to. Scientists believe that it happens due to change in the
flow of blood in your brain. Now most of them think that migraine headache
starts when overactive of nerves cell in our brains sends the signals which
triggers in our trigeminal nerve and this gives the sensation to our head and
face. CGRP (calcitonin gene-related peptide) makes the blood vessels lining in
our brain swell.

Treatment:

Mainly there is no
cure for migraine headache. But it can be treated with the help of some drugs
which includes; nausea medicine, triptans, OTC (over-the-counter) drugs like
aspirin, caffeine, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, lasmiditan (reyvow),

Some common cause due to which you have
primary headache:

·
Alcohol  may provoke the pain

·
Foods ( certain foods
especially meats that have good amount of nitrates)

·
Stress

·
Bad posture

·
Lack of sleep

·
Skipping meals.

Secondary
headaches:

Secondary headache is the condition when
you have pain in your head due to some serious disease. Secondary headache is
the result of serious health issue.

Cause:

The main cause which includes secondary
headaches are; arterial tears (carotid or vertebral dissections), a bulge in an
artery in our brain (brain aneurysm), blood clot (venous thrombosis) within the
brain and it is separate from stroke, brain tumor, dental problem, dehydration,
nasal and sinus infection (acute sinusitis). Other type of secondary headache
includes; thunderclap headaches, spinal headaches, medication overuse
headaches, ice cream headaches (commonly called brain freeze), and external
compression headaches.

Treatment:

As there is long list of secondary
headaches so the treatment may differ from one another. It’s better to concern
your doctor for better treatment and it will help you recover from your
headaches very soon. Your doctor can medicated you and you can have quick
relief from the type of headaches I have listed above.