Diagnosing A Headache Is Not As Easy As You Think

Diagnosing a headache should be the easiest thing in the world since almost every adult suffers from headaches and when you get one then you surely know about it. But, in spite of the obvious pain, diagnosing a headache is a little bit trickier than you might think.

Astonishingly there are no general tests for diagnosing headaches and if you believe that you have a headache and can feel the pain then all you can do is tell your physician exactly how you feel and he has to come up with a diagnosis on the basis of whatever you say. However, one major problem is that when reporting symptoms descriptions can and do vary wildly.

Some individuals are simply not as clear as others when talking about what they feel and our often limited vocabulary does not help us either. Talking about having a 'stabbing pain' might seem to be a very expressive description to you but it might not necessarily help your physician too much.

As if this was not bad enough diagnosis is made even harder because headaches come in various different types.

Tension headaches which are caused by inflamed neck or facial muscles and dilated blood vessels in the head amongst other things do not often get diagnosed by a physician as the majority of people simply treat them with painkillers or just wait until they fade.

Migraines, by contrast, are more intense and are more likely to lead to a visit to the physician although even with migraines approximately fifty percent of sufferers never ask for professional help.

Physicians can make use of a number of factors in order to diagnose a particular form of headache and recommend an appropriate treatment and, despite the fact that the pain felt is subjective, the form of that pain is an indication of the type of headache. For instance, migraines generally produce strong pulsating or throbbing sensations while in tension headaches the pain is normally more diffuse and regular.

Migraines are also normally accompanied by nausea and vomiting as well as a sensitivity to sound and light, cold extremities and several other signs that sufferers will recognize. And, as these symptoms are roughly the same from one person to another, physicians are faced with an objective set of symptoms on which they can form a sound diagnosis.

Cluster headaches are characterized by a concentrated pain behind an eye or temple that lasts for roughly half an hour to one hour and then returns the next day at roughly the same time. Cluster headaches can last for several weeks and, once again because they are quite regular, physicians have something to go on.

In those instances where a headache is the effect of a serious underlying condition like a brain tumor, physicians can diagnose this without undue difficulty. For instance, CT or MRI scans can reveal well known brain patterns that can link the headache to the physical problem underlying it.

Headaches that slowly worsen over time also provide physicians with a clue, as do patterns of pain which shift quickly, and this could for instance indicate an aneurysm (a weakening of a blood vessel) as the root cause.

Diagnosing headaches is a complex business as a result of many different types of headache and the wide variety of symptoms. Nevertheless the secret in all cases is to gather together as much objective information as possible both from the patient and clinical testing.

TheMigraineHeadacheCenter.com provides specific information about migraine headaches and other related topics such as what causes chronic headaches.