TYPE OF TENSION HEADACHE

Tension headaches can take one of many forms. They can occur over the forehead, behind the eyes, in the temples, as a band round the head, over the top of the head, at the nape of the neck (where the neck joins on to the back of the skull), or passing up from the neck into the ears. As a rule of thumb, the higher up the neck that the muscles in spasm are situated, the more the pain is perceived towards the front of the head. In other words, if muscles high in the neck are in spasm, you’ll get pain in the forehead; similarly, if the muscles in the middle of the neck are in spasm, the pain will be centred more over the top of the head. But this isn’t a hard and fast rule.

The pain is often constant, but it can be throbbing; it can be worse with movement or exertion, and sometimes keeps time with the pulse. It can also go on for days at a time – which is why tension headaches are so upsetting.

Tension headaches are seldom severe; at least, not by comparison with the sort of headache experienced by a migraine sufferer, but they are prolonged and nagging, like toothache, They can also cause considerable worry. Why am I having the pain? What sinister illness does it indicate? The fact that it won’t go away, even with painkillers, is often what frightens people most. They feel that it must be the tip of some deadly iceberg. Just to make things worse, worrying about the cause of your tension headache merely serves to increase your general level of stress and make your tension headache worse …

Sometimes tension headaches can make you feel sick or nauseous; and because of the way that neck muscles in spasm can affect the blood supply to the upper part of the spinal cord, tension headaches can often make you feel dizzy, woolly-headed, and off-balance.The changes in tension headaches sometimes cause the arteries in the muscles to open up, exposing the smaller arteries to the full force of the blood pressure. Tension headaches of this sort are often pounding, in time with the heartbeat.Typically, straining or exercising exacerbates the headache, as the blood pressure rises even more during these activities.

One of the typical features of tension headaches is that once they go they are usually gone for good (at least for that day). As we discussed above, this is simply because the ‘vicious circle’ nature of tension headaches means that they are a self-perpetuating mechanism, and once the vicious circle is broken the headaches go away. Tension headaches can often be worse on waking, especially after sleeping in; and are often exacerbated and triggered off by minor degrees of neck injury.

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Related Posts:

• AN A-Z OF EMOTIONAL PAIN: PAIN
• AN A-Z OF EMOTIONAL PAIN: ACUPUNCTURE
• AN A-Z OF LUMBAR OR PAIN AND LEG PAIN: DYSMENORRHOEA
• AN A-Z OF LUMBAR OR PAIN AND LEG PAIN: SHORT LEG SYNDROME
• AN A-Z OF DORSAL AND THORACIC PAIN: HEART DISEASE
• HEADAHES: GLAUCOMA TREATMENT
• PAIN AFTER A HEAD INJURY: PAIN IMMEDIATELY AFTER A HEAD INJURY
• HEADACHES, STROKES: COMPLEMENTARY TREATMENT
• HEADACHES, OTHER INFECTIONS: HERPES ZOSTER (SHINGLES)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Pain Relief-Muscle Relaxers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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