There can be very few people who have not experienced a headache and yet, despite the fact that they are so commonplace, their cause remains something of a mystery. Also, though we often simply talk about a headache it is surprising how few people know that there are in fact various different types of headache.
Migraines for instance affect approximately 10% of Americans (roughly twenty-eight million people) and afflict three times more women than men. And yet, although such a large section of the population suffers regularly from migraines, we still have little idea about just what causes them. There are of course several theories, the latest of which holds that they are caused by the interaction of chemicals within the brain like serotonin and the nerve cells of the brain, however we do not know for for certain whether or not this is the cause.
Cluster headaches, which are much rarer but also much more intense than migraine headaches, affect about one person in every three hundred and tend to afflict men far more than women. Once again however we only have a provisional idea about what leads to the stabbing pain that is frequently felt behind one eye in these especially painful headaches. A few people think that the cause could be a defect in the hypothalamus but, at this time, there is no sound evidence in support of this theory.
The most common type of headache is what we usually call ordinary or tension-type headaches and once again these are only partly understood. Here the list of possible causes is extremely long indeed and includes everything from the food we eat to the amount of stress we are under. Trying to isolate a specific cause has however as yet proved too difficult and exactly what produces the ordinary everyday headache is still a mystery.
Perhaps the only saving grace is that we do have a large number of medicines available to cope with the different forms of headache and most of these are safe and effective for most sufferers.
Migraine headaches have proved hard to treat for a long time and the ergot drugs once used to treat them had varying degrees of success. These were then replaced by triptans which proved to be more effective but which regrettably had several disadvantages. Now however a new generation of triptan drugs are proving to be safe, show fewer side effects and are effective for most sufferers.
We have also seen an increase in the use of preventive medicines for migraine headaches like calcium channel blockers, beta blockers, anti-seizure medications, anti-depressants and various other drugs which are commonly used to treat other well known conditions. For many people these medications will indeed stop headaches from occurring at all, while in other people they act to reduce the frequency with which headaches occur.
For everyday headaches traditional over-the-counter drugs like paracetamol and aspirin (which have been with us for over 100 years) and newer drugs such as ibuprofen offer safe and effective relief in the majority of cases. For people suffering from frequent headaches though care has to be taken as even the humble aspirin can have side effects if taken too frequently.
Even though there is still so much that we do not know about what causes headaches the simple fact that we can treat them effectively is a comfort to the many sufferers and especially to the large number of people who are afflicted by often very incapacitating migraine headaches. Surprisingly enough though only about half of all those who suffer from migraine headaches ever seek medical advice so that there are millions of individuals today who are needlessly suffering in silence.
If you are bothered by headaches and find that over-the-counter medicines like paracetamol or aspirin do not do the trick then, rather than sit and suffer in silence, drop in and see your physician who will almost certainly be able to help.
Tags: cluster headaches, headache, migraine, migrane, sinus headaches, tension headaches