Types Of Headaches
What are the different types of headaches? Headaches are certainly not good. Every time we get headaches, our normal routine gets ruined as we feel that head- shredding feeling. But do you know that there are many different types of headaches? These types of headaches are migraines, muscle contraction headaches, chronic daily headache, cluster headaches, ice cream headache, sinister headache, and facial headache.
Migraines are types of headaches that are very severe. The people who experience migraine tend to stop whatever they are doing because they are not able to concentrate due to the pain. There are varying symptoms of migraine. Some of the most common symptoms include headaches that are severe, routine aggravated, and pulsating, nausea, vomiting, photophobia and phonophobia, wherein photophobia pertains to being overly sensitive to light and phonophobia pertains to being overly sensitive to sound.
The chronic daily headache are types of headaches that are present daily for up to 15 days every month. Most of the time, these occur recurrently in six months. Sometimes, these happen even more. The main victims of these types of headaches are children and old people. Unlike the migraines where more women are affected, the chronic daily headaches are more prevalent in men. The most common symptoms of the chronic daily headache include neck stiffness, superimposed symptoms of migraine, high frequency headache, and many others.
The cluster types of headaches are the rarest of all types. Studies show that the cluster headaches affect just 1 out of 6000 women and 1 out of 1000 men. Many people who get this headache are smokers and are around twenty years of age. As the name implies, these are headaches that occur in clusters, every year or so, at somewhere around the same time.
The Ice Cream headaches are types of headaches that usually occur in middle aged patients. This is characterized by a short and piercing pain that can last from as quickly as seconds to as long as minutes. This is called ‘ice cream’ headache because it is mostly caused by eating cold food such as ice creams.
The sinister types of headaches are those that occur by the time a person reaches 30 years old. The most common type of sinister headaches includes meningitis, intracranial tumors, temporal arteritis, primary angle closure glaucoma, idiopathic intracranial hypertension, and sub-acute carbon monoxide poisoning. The causes of these headaches differ for each of the sinister headaches. For meningitis, the symptoms include neck stiffness and fever. For intracranial tumors, there is increase in intracranial pressure. For temporal arteritis, symptoms include persistent headaches. For primary angle closure glaucoma, the symptoms include red eyes, ocular hypertension, impaired vision, and many others. Lastly, for sub-acute carbon monoxide poisoning, the symptoms include nausea, muscular weakness, dimness of vision, headaches, and even double vision.
Facial headaches are composed of two ailments – sinusitis and post herpetic neuralgia. Sinusitis is the infection of at least one of the cranial sinuses, while the post herpetic neuralgia or shingles are pain that cranial nerves produce. The symptoms of these two are similar: needle pricking head pain.
