Scientists have provided the info you need to know with headaches.
To headaches include pain that appear in the head or upper neck. Sources of pain are the tissues and structures that are located around the brain; in the brain itself has no nerves that could cause pain, writes the Chronicle.Info with reference to LadyHealth.
Inflammation or irritation that causes headache, may occur in the periosteum, located within the skull, muscle tissues, sinuses, the eyes, the ears, the meninges, arteries, veins and nerves. Headache may be dull, sharp, throbbing, mild, moderate or very strong.
Secondary headaches
Secondary headaches are pain caused various problems in the structures of the head and neck. The causes of such pain can be, for example, infections of the teeth, sinuses, as well as dangerous diseases such as encephalitis and meningitis. Headaches that result from head injuries, some medications, alcohol or drugs, also belong to secondary headaches. To cure a headache, requires addressing its underlying cause.
Primary headaches
In most cases, headaches are of this type. They are not caused by any illness or injury, and often to establish the cause fails.
Headaches are a busy type – this is the most common type of primary headaches. According to who, 80% of women and 67% of men from time to time suffer from headaches intense type. The most likely reason for their appearance is the contraction of the muscles that cover the inner surface of the skull. There was not enough research to accurately establish the causes of such pain, but we know that they often appear after physical or emotional stress.
Intense headache type typically occurs from two sides of the head; often found in the so-called girdle pain, when a person feels pressure from all sides of the head, but most severe it is, usually, in the temples and above the eyebrow. The intensity of the pain may vary, but usually it is not so strong that the person could not cope with my daily duties.
Most people the appearance of pain is unpredictable – your head might hurt a few times during one month and then the pain may disappear for a year or more. Only a small proportion of people who suffer from pain of this type, they appear every few days or even every day.
Headaches hectic type never are accompanied by nausea, vomiting, or increased sensitivity to light (such characteristics may be typical for migraine).
Most people cope with such pain with over-the-counter painkillers, such as aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen or naproxen. Some people do not take the painkillers and just wait until the pain go away on its own.
Those who have headaches often appear, it is recommended to consult a doctor. To reduce the frequency of episodes of headache can be used methods such as biofeedback, massage, and various techniques for stress control.
Over-the-counter analgesics, although they are, overall, very safe, long-term use can cause various health problems. For example, taking paracetamol in large amounts and over prolonged time can lead to liver damage. Especially carefully the need to take paracetamol to patients who regularly consume alcohol. The abuse of aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen can cause kidney damage.
Cluster headaches
Cluster headaches are so named because they appear daily for several weeks (sometimes longer), and then disappear for a few months or years. The pain appears at the same time, often the patient wakes up for her middle of the night. The causes of cluster headaches are still unknown, but perhaps they are caused by the sudden release of large amount of histamine or serotonin in the brain. A brain scan of a person during an attack of cluster headaches shows the abnormal activity of the hypothalamus. About this type of headaches is also known the following:
they are often observed in members of the same family, which suggests that they are associated with genetics;
their trigger could be a change of sleep mode;
their triggers can also be some medications (e.g., nitroglycerin).
Smoking, alcohol and certain foods (particularly chocolate and smoked meat) may contribute to cluster headaches in periods when the probability of occurrence of these pains is greatest.
In the period of cluster headaches in most patients, the pain occurs once or twice a day, in rare cases, more often. Each attack lasts from 30 to 90 minutes. The source of the pain is located behind one of the eyes. Pain itself is extremely strong – so much so that patients can roll on the floor, banging my head into walls, and even try to commit suicide. People who have had cluster seizures the pain, describe it as the most severe pain they had ever experienced.
In the cluster period pain you need to ease the symptoms of the first attack, and try to prevent further attacks. To facilitate already appeared pain can be used for inhalation of concentrated oxygen injection tryptanol drugs such as sumatriptan or rizatriptan that are commonly used to treat migraine, injection of lidocaine into the nostril, dihydroergotamine – a drug that narrows blood vessels, or caffeine. To prevent the following attacks are used, calcium channel blockers, prednisone, antidepressants, lithium or anticonvulsants.
To prevent the onset of a new period of cluster headaches is impossible, because you can’t even tell you when we start this period, and whether he will start at all. It is assumed that Smoking cessation and limited alcohol consumption can reduce the likelihood that a patient will ever again arise cluster headaches.
The different types of headaches
Headache may accompany many diseases. It is different: a constricting, bursting from the inside, sharp, dull and so on. The same can be different and the causes of headaches, therefore if often a headache, it is better not to swallow pills, but to consult doctor to understand the causes of this phenomenon.
Causes and types of headaches
Headache refers to any pain in the head. Periodically a headache almost at all, but anxiety should cause persistent or recurring headaches.
Headache may occur in any tissue in the head region, which has nerve endings. These nerve endings are not present only in brain tissue, so their irritation may not cause pain. But there are nerve endings in the skin, subcutaneous tissue, muscles, tendons, blood vessels, periosteum of the skull bones, the membranes of the brain. Their irritation and headaches.
Headaches may be vascular, muscular, neuralgic, arising on a background of increased intracranial pressure or disruption of nerve endings etc. a Headache can also be mixed.
The headache that occurs when muscle tension in the head
The muscle tension in the head often occurs when increased physical or mental stress, with nervousness (diseases arising from nervous shock), osteochondrosis, diseases of the eye. Another reason for this phenomenon may be prolonged compression of the head (for example, a close head-dress). Thus there is a sense of compressive wrap or helmet on his head. Starting from any one area of the head (forehead, neck, etc.), pain spreads to the entire scalp, the forehead and even upper neck. This is because our head is in the form of a cap covers the tendon, to which are attached all the muscles. It is through the nerve endings located in the tendon pain and spreads over the entire head.
If this headache was caused by mental tension, help sedatives, osteochondrosis – treatment of the underlying disease, wearing a special neck collar, procaine blockade and pain relievers.
Headache, which can occur when irritation of the nerve endings in the blood vessels
This is the most dangerous headache as it occurs in tension of the walls of blood vessels. This can be caused by raising or lowering blood pressure (BP) and blood stasis due to lack of tone of the vein walls.
An increase in blood pressure causes a severe throbbing headache that require urgent help, otherwise the blood vessel in the brain can burst and the blood from it gets into brain tissue, causing many disorders (hemorrhagic stroke). With a sharp spasm of blood vessels of the brain can disrupt the blood flow to a certain area of the brain that will lead to the withering away of the fabric of this area of the brain (ischemic stroke).
Dramatic expansion of brain arteries causes a migraine attack, headache this often occurs in one side of the head and is paroxysmal throbbing in nature, localizes most often in the frontal-temporal-orbital region.
Headache may occur in violation of the outflow of venous blood, the expansion and overflow of blood veins. This headache is typically aching, arching, it is enhanced in the supine position.
With the headaches associated c increased blood pressure prescribe medications that reduce blood pressure and widen blood vessels. Migraine, however, help drugs that narrow blood vessels caused by vascular headache – drugs that strengthen the tone of the vein walls.
Other types of headaches
When increased intracranial pressure (e.g., against a tumor, abscess, brain injury) may experience the tension of the meninges, leading to the emergence of a very strong bursting headache. In such cases, to ease the condition can drugs that reduce brain swelling.
Reducing intracranial pressure may occur after lumbar puncture, headache with the increases in the standing position.
With the defeat of the sensitive branches of the nerves ending in the head region, there is a neuralgic headache, which is paroxysmal in nature (attacks may last long, but follow one after the other). At the same time on the scalp are areas of irritation which provokes such attacks. To remove this kind of headaches used a variety of anesthetics, including procaine blockade.
In some cases, the headache occurs on the background of metabolic disorders (often with extended use for various diets for weight loss), which leads to disruption of the pain receptors of the head. Will help in this case, only a balanced diet and the correct mode of the day.
Often to attack one type of headache joins the other (the most common variant – during the attack of vascular pain there is a muscle tension in the head and joins the muscular headache).
In order to help the person with the headache attack, need to know why she showed up, and this can only be done by a doctor.
