What causes headaches?
In ancient Greece, headaches were considered strong afflictions. Victims prayed for relief from Asclepius, the god of medication. And if the pain continued, a medical exponent would carry out the best-known medication, drilling a small hole in the skull to drain seemingly infected blood.
This dire strategy, called trepanation, frequently replaced the headache with another everlasting condition. Fortunately, doctors, now don’t resort to power tools to heal headaches. But we still retain a lot to learn about this ancient condition.
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Present, we’ve classified headache types into two camps,
- Primary headaches
- Secondary headaches
The former isn’t typical of a basic complication, injury, or condition. They’re the condition. Primary headaches consider for 50 of reported cases. We actually know much further about secondary headaches.
These are caused by other health problems. With triggers ranging from dehydration and caffeine withdrawal to head and neck injury, and heart complications.
Doctors have classified over 150 diagnosable types. All with different possible causes, symptoms, and treatments. But we’ll take as an instance, a common cause, that’s a sinus infection.
The sinuses are a system of cavities that spread behind our foreheads, noses, and upper cheeks. When our sinuses are infected. Our immune response heats up the area, roasting the bacteria and inflaming the cavities well past their usual size.
The engorged sinuses put pressure on the cranial arteries and veins, as well as muscles in the neck and head. Their pain receptors, called nociceptors, trigger in response. Cueing the brain to release an overflow of neuropeptides that inflame the cranial blood vessels, swelling and warming up the head.
This discomfort, paired with excitable-sensitive head muscles, creates the sore, pulsating pain of a headache.
Not all headache pain comes from swelling. Tense muscles and inflamed, sensitive nerves result in varying degrees of discomfort in each headache. But all cases are responses to some cranial irritant.
While the cause is clear in secondary headaches, the origins of primary headaches remain unknown. scientists are still researching possible triggers for the three types of primary headaches,
- Recurring, Long-lasting migraines
- Intensively painful, rapid-fire cluster headaches
- The tension headache (The most common one)
As the name suggests, tension headaches are known for creating the sensation of a tight band squeezed around the head. These headaches increase the tenderness of the pericranial muscles. Also hardly pops with blood and oxygen.
cases report stress, dehydration, and hormone changes as triggers. But these don’t fit the symptoms relatively right. For instance, in dehydration headaches the front lobe actually shrinks out from the skull, creating front swelling that doesn’t match the position of the pain in tension headaches.
Scientists have propositions for what the actual cause. Ranging from spasming blood vessels to overly sensitive nociceptors, but no one knows for sure.
Most headache research is concentrated on more severe primary headaches. Migraines are reoccurring headaches, which produce a vise-like sensation on the skull that can last from four hours to three days.
In 20 of the cases, these attacks are intense enough to load the rain with electrical energy, which hyper-excites sensitive nerve endings. This produces hallucinations called auras, which can include seeing flashing lights and geometric patterns and feeling tingling sensations.
Cluster headaches, another primary headache type, cause burning, stabbing bursts of pain behind one eye, leading to red-eye, constricted pupil, and drooping eyelid.
What can we be do about these conditions, which dramatically affect numerous people’s quality of life?
Tension headaches and most secondary cases can treated with over-the-counter pain cures. Similar to anti-inflammatory medicines that reduce cranial swelling. And numerous secondary headache triggers, like dehydration, eye strain, and stress, can be proactively avoided.
Migraines and cluster headaches are more complicated. And we haven’t yet discovered reliable treatments that work for everyone. But thankfully, pharmacologists and neurologists are hard at work cracking these pressing mysteries that weigh so heavily on our minds.