1. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: More people suffer tension headaches than migraines. But most tension headaches are not as powerful.
2. Events that start tension headaches may include emotional pressure and the deeper than normal sadness called depression. Other tension headaches can start from something as simple as tiredness. Common changes in atmospheric conditions also can be responsible.
3. The Mayo Clinic says you may feel a tension headache as tightness in the skin around your eyes. Or, you may feel pressure around your head. Episodic tension headaches strike from time to time. Chronic tension headaches happen more often. A tension headache can last from a half hour to a whole week.
4. The Mayo Clinic says the pain may come very early in the day. Other signs can include pain in the neck or the lower part of the head. Scientists are not sure what causes tension headaches. For years, researchers blamed muscle tension from tightening in the face, neck and the skin on top of the head. They believed emotional tension caused these movements.
5. But that belief has been disputed. A test called an electromyogram shows that muscle tension does not increase in people with a tension headache. The test records electrical currents caused by muscle activity. Such research caused the International Headache Society to re-name the tension headache. The group now calls it a tension-type headache.
6. Some scientists now believe that tension headaches may result from changes among brain chemicals such as serotonin. The changes may start sending pain messages to the brain. These changes may interfere with brain activity that suppresses pain.
7. Medicines for tension headache can be as simple as aspirin or other painkillers. But if your pain is too severe, you will need a doctor's advice.
8. A web site called Family Doctor dot org provides information from the American Academy of Family Physicians. The group suggests steps to ease or end a tension headache.
9. For example, it says putting heat or ice on your head or neck can help. So can standing under hot water while you are getting washed. The group also advises exercising often. Another idea is taking a holiday from work. But you had better ask your employer first.
10. Ask anyone with a cluster headache, and they will tell you that the pain is terrible. The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio says the cluster headache can be many times more intense than a migraine.
11. Cluster headaches usually strike young people. Smokers and persons who drink alcohol often get these headaches. Men are about six times more likely than women to have them. The Cleveland Clinic says this is especially true of younger men. Doctors say cluster headaches often strike during changes of season.
12. Cluster headache patients describe the pain as burning. The pain is almost always felt on one side of the face. It can last for up to ninety minutes. Then it stops. But it often starts again later the same day. Eighty to ninety percent of cluster headache patients have pain over a number of days to a whole year. Pain-free periods separate these periods.
13. The Cleveland Clinic says the cause of cluster headaches is in a brain area known as a trigeminal-autonomic reflex pathway. When the nerve is made active, it starts pain linked to cluster headaches. The nerve starts a process that makes one eye watery and red.
14. Studies have shown that activation of the trigeminal nerve may come from a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. The Cleveland Clinic says injections of the drug sumatriptan can help. Many other drugs could be used. For example, doctors say breathing oxygen also can help.
15. Thankfully, modern medicine has ways to treat almost all of our headaches.
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