Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health
Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health

Headache

What is a headache?

Symptoms of headache

Causes of headache

Triggers for headache

Children and headache

Prevention / remedies / cures / treatment for headaches

What is a headache?

A headache (cephalgia) is pain around the head or neck. The brain tissue itself cannot feel pain, so the pain is caused by disturbance to structures around the brain. There are over 200 types of headache classification, which range from harmless to life-threatening. The causes of headaches vary, and constant recurrence may indicate an underlying condition that needs attention.

The treatment for a headache should depend on its cause. The most common means of gaining relief from a headache is using analgesics.

Over 90% of people suffer from headaches at some time. Only about 1% of headaches have a serious underlying cause.

If headaches are an ongoing (chronic) problem, keep a diary to help identify the cause. It may be a medication, menstrual, certain foods, insufficient water, work or social situations causing stress, etc.

A migraine is believed to be a neurovascular disorder. It is a chronic condition characterised by severe headaches and nausea.

Symptoms of headache

Depending on the type of headache, pain anywhere around the head or neck. The pain may be dull, throbbing, stabbing, thunderclap, or clustered. It can last anytime from a few minutes to hours or days.

The following headache symptoms should be investigated because they may be life-threatening or cause long-term damage:

Causes of headache

Causes which need urgent treatment

More serious causes of headaches include meningitis, encephalitis, brain abscess, brain tumour, and injury causing internal bleeding. If a headache is unexplained and severe, or continues for an unusually long time, or is accompanied by other symptoms, then check with a health professional.

Triggers for headache

Children and headache

Children can suffer from the same types of headaches as adults, including tension headaches, migraines, chronic daily headaches, cluster headaches and sinus headaches. They have the added problem of being more likely to wear dental braces and orthodontic headgear that place constant pressure on the jaw area. It is common for headaches to start in childhood or adolescence.

Although most cases of headaches in children are usually benign, when they are accompanied with other symptoms such as speech problems, muscle weakness or loss of vision, a more serious underlying cause should be investigated.

Prevention / remedies / cures / treatment for headaches

If you use any of these remedies, please come back next week (or whenever you have an outcome) and let us know about your experience. Please leave a comment as many people are interested.

See details of remedies recommended by Grow Youthful visitors, and their experience with them.