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It Is Not Quite As Simple As You Might Think To Diagnose Headaches

You would think that diagnosing a headache would be one of the simplest things in the world as almost all adults suffer from headaches and when you get one then you definitely know about it. However, in spite of the noticeable pain, diagnosing a headache is a little more difficult than you may think.

Surprisingly there are no general tests when it comes to diagnosing a headache 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 are feeling and he has to come up with a diagnosis on the basis of whatever you say. One big problem however is that when talking about symptoms descriptions can vary markedly.

Some people are simply not as articulate as others when describing what they feel and our often limited vocabulary does not help very much. Saying that you are experiencing a 'stabbing pain' may seem to be a very good description to you but it might not necessarily be very helpful to your physician.

As if this was not bad enough diagnosing a headache is made even more difficult by the fact that headaches fall into several different categories.

Tension headaches which are produced by inflamed neck or facial muscles and dilated head blood vessels amongst other things do not often get diagnosed by a physician at all as most people simply treat them themselves with painkillers or just wait until they go by themselves.

On the other hand, migraines are more painful and are more likely to occasion a visit to your physician although even here roughly fifty percent of sufferers never seek professional help.

Physicians are able to make use of several factors in order to diagnose a specific form of headache and advise a suitable treatment and, despite the fact that the pain is subjective, the form of that pain is indicative of the type of headache. For instance, migraines on the whole produce powerful pulsating or throbbing sensations whereas in tension headaches the pain is normally more diffuse and constant.

Migraine headaches are also usually accompanied by nausea and vomiting as well as sensitivity to sound and light, cold extremities and a number of other signs which sufferers will recognize. And, as these symptoms are roughly the same from one sufferer to the next, physicians are faced with an objective set of symptoms on which they are able to base a sound diagnosis.

Cluster headaches are characterized by an intense pain behind an eye or temple which lasts for typically 30 minutes to one hour and then returns the following day at about the same time. Cluster headaches can last for a number of weeks and, once more as they are quite regular, physicians have something to go on.

In those instances where a headache is the effect of some serious underlying condition such as a brain tumor, physicians are able to diagnose this without undue difficulty. For instance, CT or MRI scans can be used to look for well known brain patterns which can link the headache to the physical problem underlying it.

A headache which progressively worsens over time provides physicians with a clue, as do patterns of pain which shift quickly, and this might for instance indicate an aneurysm (a weakening of a blood vessel) as the root cause.

Diagnosing a headache is complicated as a result of many different forms of headache and the wide range of symptoms. However the secret is to gather together as much objective information as possible both from the sufferer and clinical testing.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

TheMigraineHeadacheCenter.com provides specific information about migranes and other related topics such as why does excessive drinking cause a headache

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