I’m sure there are many people who are troubled by headaches in their daily lives. What exactly is a headache? Why does it “visit” you? And how to deal with headaches?
Is a headache a minor illness?
A headache can be a big or small thing.
In less than a quarter of a column, I found more than 300 names of diseases, including more than 90 headaches caused by bad brain, 180 headaches caused by diseases elsewhere, and the rest are all kinds of diseases that do not affect the brain.
Then there were more than 30 other cases of discomfort that made people feel like they had a headache.
More than 300 kinds! Headache is so arbitrary.
Don’t worry, in fact, many of these diseases are indiscriminate.
Most headaches are minor issues
Stress and emotions.
Hot and cold stimuli.
Hysteria (a condition in which there is no substantial pathology but you think you just have a headache).
Colds or rhinitis.
Endocrine disorders.
These should be very familiar causes.
Most of the headaches we see are basically minor problems of this type, which are not to be feared. As long as we pay attention to rest, keep warm, exercise in moderation, find appropriate ways to relieve our stress, and actively deal with the primary condition, I believe the headache will soon pass.
Events that can cause a headache
It is rare to have a major headache, but when there is one, it must be taken seriously.
There is brain in the brain shell (skull), water (cerebrospinal fluid), blood vessels, and outside the brain is the meninges, and any of these things that go wrong can cause a headache.
In principle, anything that can cause a change in pressure inside the brain case (inside the skull), whether elevated or lowered, will cause a headache; having blood or pus irritate the meninges will also cause a headache.
On top of these principles, I will start by naming a few.
Trauma to the head.
Migraine headaches.
Intracranial infections.
Cerebrovascular lesions.
Cerebral hemorrhage.
Hydrocephalus.
Tumors.
Low cranial pressure.
In addition, certain epilepsy, hypertension, anemia or certain poisoning (such as organophosphorus pesticide poisoning) may also show the symptoms of “headache”, so it is important to identify the cause and target treatment.
A headache is not necessarily a headache
When you have a headache, do you feel it carefully, does it hurt anywhere else in your head?
Some headaches are not necessarily “brain” pains, but pains in other parts of the head may have “tricked” us.
Eye pain: glaucoma or other eye diseases.
Ear pain: otitis media and many other ear diseases.
face pain or toothache: trigeminal neuralgia or other maxillofacial disorders.
Pain in the back of the head: occipital neuralgia.
These “accessories” of pain sometimes make people feel “headache”, but in fact, there is a difference when you distinguish carefully.
It is like the difference between “skin pain or flesh pain”. Sometimes the subjective feeling is headache, but it is actually pain in the neighboring area, which you just cannot distinguish.
What should I do for a headache?
It’s not that troublesome, just take some painkillers for a headache.
This view is actually very wrong.
The commercially available painkillers or headache powder basically belong to a thing called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which is a very magical drug, but the damage to the gastric mucosa is great, how many gastritis, gastric ulcer, gastric perforation is the glorious birth of patients taking this drug.
The treatment of minor problems has been more or less talked about earlier. If the headache is not severe and there are no accompanying symptoms, it is possible to rest and rest at home and observe for a period of time.
Strategic contempt, tactical attention
If the pain has reached the point of needing painkillers, is it not enough to get our attention and go to the hospital to rule it out?
Of course, the tests performed in the hospital should be targeted by the doctor according to the patient’s specific situation, not to “investigate indiscriminately”.
For people with diseases such as hypertension and heart disease, a blood pressure may be taken first because perhaps the blood pressure is fluctuating and causing the headache.
For headaches that have no obvious cause, the first choice of examination should be cranial CT.
This test covers a wide range of diseases. For some diseases, an enhanced CT may be an option.
For patients suspected of having epilepsy, an EEG can be done to diagnose or rule out.
For intracranial tumors, MRI may also be required.
For cerebrovascular malformations, DSA, CTA, MRA, etc. may be performed depending on the condition.
Not all of the tests listed above are necessary, and not all of them can be done to find out the cause of the headache, but in the end, it is up to the receiving physician to arrange targeted tests according to the specific situation.
If there is anything to pay attention to in life when a headache occurs, it is to get more rest. Generally speaking, those headaches that don’t have a backstage to support them are hard to last more than a week.
However, if the headache persists for a long time without relief, the pain level is unbearable, the pain level is rapidly increasing, or other unfathomable conditions have appeared, such as numbness in the hands and feet, unsteadiness, inability to speak, or nausea and vomiting, and a series of accompanying symptoms, then don’t spend time and go to the hospital.