We recently found ourselves in the hospital with our son three times in one week for severe migraines. This got me thinking about “what the heck is a migraine really?”. I am sure that, like me, most people have experience the usual pressure headache typically thought to have been brought on by stress, tension or even a long night of imbibing. I found myself thinking “what is he complaining about…” or “he is faking it…” or even “suck it up, take some Aleve and get back to school…”. Further, I thought of a migraine as just a really bad headache… Well, I have found that I could not have been more wrong. In the following ramblings, I will attempt to define what a headache is and how it compares to a migraine
The Common Headache (aka “Cephalgia”)
My first stop was over to Wikipedia where they define a headache as:
Pain anywhere in the region of the head or neck. It can be a symptom of a number of different conditions of the head and neck.
A couple of facts that I was not aware of:
- The brain tissue itself is not sensitive to pain because it lacks pain receptors.
- There are 9 pain sensitive areas that have been shown to bring on headaches
- Muscles
- Nerves
- Arteries
- Veins
- Subcutaneous tissues
- Eyes
- Ears
- Sinuses
- Mucous membranes
Causes of Headaches
From my research it appears that there are over 200 types of headaches and more are being found as research continues in this area. Headaches are broken down into Primary and Secondary groups.
Primary
This is the most common form of headaches and this is where the tension and migraine.
Secondary
These types are caused by pain in the head and neck. Most of these are not life threatening but some of these can kill you which is why you should not mess around with headaches if they are not normal for the person.
Headache Classifications
According to the International Headache Society a headache is a non-specific symptom, which basically means that it can have many possible triggers/causes. This present a potential problem for treating the headache as you have to get back to the root cause or trigger.
There are 5 basic classifications of headaches:
1. Vasular
- migraine - neurologically produced (more common in women)
- toxic - fever produced
- cluster - severe recurrent short headaches in the eyes (more common in men)
2. Muscular
- tension - tightening or tensing of muscles in the face and neck
3. Cervicogenic
- cervical - brought on by awkward positioning of the neck
4. Traction and Inflammatory
- these are symptoms of other disorders like sinus infection and can include the other type of headaches above which could create a sort of “waterfall or snowball” effect.