The Mystery Behind The Common Headache
Friday, October 3rd, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
There can be very few of us who have not experienced a headache at some point and yet, despite the fact that they are so common, their cause remains a mystery. Furthermore, though we generally talk about a headache there are actually a number of different types of headache.
For instance, migraines affect about 10% of the US population (in the region of twenty-eight million individuals) and afflict three times as many women as men. And yet, although such a large section of the population suffers regularly from migraine headaches, we still have little idea about what causes them. There are of course several theories, the most recent of which holds that they are caused by the interaction of brain chemicals such as serotonin and the nerve cells of the brain, but we do not know for sure whether or not this is the cause.
Cluster headaches, which are far rarer but also far more intense than migraines, affect roughly one person in three hundred and tend to attack men rather than women. Once again however we only have a tentative idea about just what leads to the stabbing pain that is often felt behind one eye in these especially painful headaches. Some researchers suspect that a problem with the hypothalamus could be the cause but, at this time, there is no firm evidence in support of this theory.
The commonest form of headache is what we generally call ordinary or tension-type headaches and once more these are far from well understood. In this case the list of possible causes is extremely long and includes everything from the food we eat to how stressed we are. Trying to isolate a precise cause has eluded us so far however and exactly what produces the common everyday headache is still a mystery.
The only saving grace however is that there is a large number of medications available to us to deal with the different types of headache and the majority of these are both safe and effective for most sufferers.
Migraines have proved hard to treat for a long time and the original ergot drugs used to treat them had varying degrees of success. These were then largely replaced by triptan drugs which proved to be more effective but which sadly had some problems. Now however a new generation of triptan drugs are proving to be safe, show fewer drawbacks and work well for most sufferers.
There has also been an increase in the use of preventive medications for migraine headaches such as beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, anti-depressants, anti-seizure medications and various other drugs that are commonly used to treat other well known conditions. For many people these drugs will stop headaches from attacking at all, while in others they can lower the frequency of headaches.
For ordinary headaches over-the-counter drugs such as aspirin or paracetamol (which have been around for more than 100 years) and newer medicines like ibuprofen provide effective and safe relief in most cases. For people suffering from regular headaches though care needs to be taken as even the lowly aspirin can have side effects if taken too frequently.
Even though there is still so much that we do not know about what causes severe headaches the simple fact that we can treat them successfully is a comfort to the many sufferers and particularly to the large number of individuals who are afflicted by frequently extremely debilitating migraine headaches. Surprisingly enough however only about half of all migraine sufferers ever seek treatment and so there are millions of individuals today who are needlessly suffering in silence.
If you are bothered by headaches and over-the-counter medications such as paracetamol or aspirin do not work then, rather than sit and suffer in silence, drop in to see your physician who will almost certainly be able to help to relieve your headaches.
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