Once in a while, you can develop a headache since it is a common condition resulting from different factors. If you are lucky, your headache may come and go without largely affecting your daily living. However, unlucky cases may mean having frequent headaches that attack at one time and quiet at the next and may even interfere with your daily work. Aventura headache specialist offers different solutions depending on the type of headache to ensure you live a pain-free life. Meanwhile, here is a discussion on the different forms of primary headaches you may suffer from, depending on their pain intensity.
Tension Headache
Usually, with a tension headache, you may feel like you have a tight band surrounding your head. While tension headaches are the most common type, your doctor may not fully understand the cause. However, stress can easily trigger tension-type of headaches. Tension headaches can happen as an episodic tension type, which lasts up to half an hour to a week. Continuous episodic tension-type headaches may become chronic. Chronic tension headaches on the hand may last up to hours and persist.
Cluster Headache
Cluster headaches are usually very painful and usually occur in cluster periods. Cluster periods can last up to months, leading to remission periods where your headaches stop and may not occur for months. You may wake up at night with intense pain around one side of your head but rarely is a cluster headache life-threatening. Cluster headaches usually strike without warning and cause excruciating pain behind one eye, restlessness, excessive tearing, and one-sided pain. You may also experience flushing on your face, drooping eyelid, eye redness, and stuffy nose on the affected side. Also, a cluster headache may happen in episodes where you develop daily headaches, an attack that can last up to three hours and occur mostly at night.
Migraines
A migraine usually causes severe throbbing pain on one side of your head, accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and extreme light and sound sensitivity. A migraine attack can last several hours to days while interfering with daily activities. You may have an aura as a warning symptom before your migraine attack, and an aura includes visual disturbances. There are four stages to a migraine type of headache, but you may not necessarily go through all of them.
First is a prodrome which causes frequent yawning, neck stiffness, food cravings, increased urination, and mood changes. Next is an aura that can cause vision loss, weakness, and difficulty speaking, which will then be followed by a migraine attack that may last up to three days if untreated. The last stage is post-drome which may leave you confused and drained but may also cause you to feel elated. Suddenly moving your head after an attack may bring the migraine pain again shortly.
A headache that interferes with your daily functioning and affects your mood should be something you address with your doctor. While it is common to develop a headache, certain primary headaches can cause intense pain that keeps progressing if left untreated. You can record your symptoms and how they make you feel to help your doctor come up with the correct diagnosis. Anyone can have a headache, but if it makes you feel worse daily, you can talk to your doctor about it.
