- Vascular headaches - thought to be caused by blood vessel swelling and hyperemia (increase of blood flow). The most common type being migraine. Migraine sufferers typically have severe pain on one or both sides of the head, visual disturbance, and/or upset stomach. Other forms of vascular headaches include cluster headaches and toxic headaches. Click here to read our separate article "What Are Cluster Headaches? What Causes Cluster Headaches?".
- Muscle contraction (tension) headaches - also known as myogenic headaches, are caused by the tightening/tensing of facial and neck muscles, these account for nearly 90% of all headaches. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen reported in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology that 3% of the population has chronic tension-type headaches.
- Traction headaches - these are usually caused by pulling or stretching pain-sensitive parts of the head, as may occur during eyestrain and eye muscles are tensed. G. Kim Bigley wrote in the book "Clinical Methods: The History, Physical, and Laboratory Examinations. 3rd edition, "Headaches can result from intracranial mass lesions such as metastatic tumors, abscess, or hematoma (a solid swelling of clotted blood)."Traction headache is caused by organic diseases involving structures in the head
- Inflammatory headaches - these headaches are symptoms of other disorders, including sinus infection,meningitis, or stroke.
I think I have the second one... muscle contraction. Of course this is making me ask more questions than I had originally thought up. Like, where does a hang over come into all this? I did karate yesterday and that was very muscle tension-y (!) so that is why I think I am in the second category.
But there was a little that I thought I knew about headaches and this does not fit any of it, I thought when you have a headache that blood vessels in the skin or bag around your brain begin to contract or expand giving the headache feeling. That is why when I was in America a few years ago, Boston to be exact, and that I stopped into 3 or 4 Dunkin Doughnuts a day that and had a coffee at every one with my few doughnuts that I began to have serious migraine headaches. All the new coffee in my unexpecting system was exciting the vesels around my brain. So I stopped drinking coffee on the advice of a cousine that was advising me that this was the problem, of course then I had more headaches, she said that this was because I was "coming down" from all the coffee.
Maybe they do say that in the above 4 points... couldn't focus enough on the little text there was.
Oh boy... it is enough to give a man a headache....
No comments:
Post a Comment