I get a headache probably once or twice a week. Not a crippling migraine, just a run-of-the-mill achey headache. Sometimes I think it’s sinus pressure, sometimes it seems to be stress-related, sometimes I think I must’ve slept funny… but no matter the reason, it’s a fairly regular occurrence.
A few of my friends claim they never get headaches, so now I’m wondering… Your thoughts?
I used to get them all the time. Then I got my blood pressure under control.
Are you drinking enough fluids? I used to get headaches a couple of times a week until I started watching my fluid intake and realized I was probably dehydrated. You might try drinking more water and see if it helps.
Do you wear eyeglasses or contacts? Might be time to update your prescription.
I’m usually headache-free unless I’m withdrawing from sugar and/or caffeine.
Damn you SDMB! Someone always gets in first with what I was going to say.
I’ve had a headache every day, with minimal effect from paracetamol, ibuprofen and/or codeine. BP through the roof.
When I was on the birth control pill, I would get a headache every single day. I sympathize, headaches really suck.
I get hormonal headaches starting a few days before and ending a few days after my period. So, two weeks a month with a headache nearly every day, two weeks a month with zero headaches.
I could have written the OP, except “once or twice a week” is probably an average over a year. I go through periods where I’ll have daily headaches, and then I’ll be headache free for a few weeks. I’m getting better at controlling them, but I don’t know if that’s me staying on top of things or my propensity for headaches decreasing, or both. I don’t get migraines, just sinus headaches that can get out of control. My triggers are your typical lack of sleep, dehydration, low blood sugar (is this a thing? we’ll just call it hunger), and fluctuations in caffeine intake. If I don’t catch them early they can get bad enough to make me vomit, so now I don’t travel without ibuprofen and I don’t skimp on that first dose.
I get headaches a couple of times a week, regular as clockwork. So much so that if I don’t have them for a while, I get worried that something is out of whack.
It’s no mystery why I get them: It’s from staring at a computer screen way too much. If I’m away from the computer for a time, or at least only use a computer as much as a sane person, they go away.
I’m sure there are some long-term effects in my future. Stroke, brain tumor, eyes popping out, growing a second head… something.
I think what everyone is trying say is: you ought not to be having regular headaches without knowing the cause. Could be vision, allergies, stress, or a whole bunch of things. Perhaps best to check it out?
I’d like to echo the blood pressure thing. Once I started taking medicine for it, I realized that my all too frequent headaches had greatly reduced in frequency.
All of the above are correct and you should work with your doctor to figure out the cause.
High blood pressure is the biggest concern here because it’s silent and can be deadly. It’s also a major cause of headache without an external cause. Do get your b/p checked. If you check at a place other than the doctor’s office, check it a few different days and times. Sometimes the auto-inflate cuffs at drugstores and such are not as sensitive as they could be (though they have improved over the last several years).
Here are some other common causes of non-migraine headache.
[ul]
[li] Acute sinusitis[/li][li] Concussion[/li][li] Dehydration[/li][li] Dental problems (including grinding your teeth, or bruxism)[/li][li] Ear infection (middle ear)[/li][li] Glaucoma[/li][li] Medications to treat other disorders[/li][li] Monosodium glutamate (MSG)[/li][li] Overuse of pain medication[/li][li] Panic attacks and panic disorder[/li][li] Post-concussion syndrome[/li][li] Pressure from tight-fitting headgear, such as a helmet or goggles[/li][li] Trigeminal neuralgia (disruption of the nerve connecting the face and brain)[/li][/ul]
(Sourceis the Mayo Clinc page on headaches. They have good informaiton about primary and secondary headache. There are a bunch of other possible causes, but you probably don’t have toxoplasmosis or meningitis.)
Be careful with OTC medication; if you take it too often, you can get medication overuse headache, which I hear really sucks.
That’s *exactly *how I described my “sinus headaches” to my doctor, when I’d gone to him asking why that Tylenol Sinus crap wasn’t doing a thing to help me.
And it turns out, that’s the classic description of migraine, and that most people with “sinus headaches” actually have migraine. Triggers for migraine are lack of sleep, dehydration, skipping meals, and changes in sleep/caffeine.
If the headache makes you throw up if it progresses, that’s clue number two that it’s a migraine.
If they respond to ibuprofen, you’re a lucky duck, so keep using it. If the ibuprofen stops helping, do ask your doc about other meds.
How often do you call your mother? Maybe once or twice a week?
Your headaches could be tied to some regular activity like that. Or the run-of-the-mill headaches you describe might be just as much about you focusing on how your head feels instead of something else that would distract you.
Oh my. I’m suddenly very grateful that my own “first symptom of PMS” is one day and ibuprofen works.
I have a different type of headache that needs a scalp massage (I just wash my head with a lot of digging in), micro-migraines which again get solved by ibuprofen and a very infrequent type that requires paracetamol.
I used to get headaches all the time.
Then I quit smoking. Now they are rare.
amaguri, how long have you been having these headaches regularly? Is it just for the past few months, years, a lifetime thing?
I’m going to pull an asshole move and tell you a scary anecdote to impel you to go to the doctor. (I’ll spoiler tag it to reduce the assholishness. :o)
[spoiler]My supervisor had been having headaches for the past month or maybe longer, which was unusual for her, but she chalked them up to stress from family problems along with dehydration from the summer heat. Her last day at work before going on her long summer break was July 10, and I remember she had a headache that day, too.
A few days ago, I got a call from our Big Boss, saying HR was looking for her emergency contact info but wouldn’t tell him why, just that the contact number in her personnel file was out of service. So I called my supervisor herself on her cell phone, and she answered from a hospital sounding like she had sudden-onset Alzheimer’s. After a lot of panicking, I was able to reach a friend of hers who told me she was in the hospital about to have surgery on a large brain tumor. That’s what had been causing her headaches, and some time early last week the pain was so bad she had called 911.
She now has aphasia and her short-term memory has been decimated, and no one knows when or if she’ll be able to work again. She’s only 53. [/spoiler]
So, uh…it wouldn’t hurt for you to make a doctor appointment, just to be safe. Odds are well in your favor that this isn’t what’s going on with you, but whatever the cause is for your headaches, it’s really worth checking it out. They’re obviously enough of a concern to you that you felt inspired to make this thread – listen to that instinct.
gallowsfodder, something similar happened to my mentor. She assumed her headaches were just stress from the crappy project we were working on and her crazy boss.
Similar assholeish story, in spoiler tags for same assholeish reasons.
Her husband called me from the hospital one day to tell me that she had a stroke. She lived and even came back to work, but her speech was damaged enough that she never got to engage her passion of stand-up comedy again. Her writing was fine, but it was terribly frustrating for her to not be verbally witty. She also needed months and months of PT, OT, and so on.
I’ve always had headaches fairly regularly for as long as I can remember, at least since high school.
I’m more concerned about the blood pressure thing, which does run in the family although I’ve always been led to believe that high blood pressure has few/no symptoms so didn’t really connect the two. At any rate, I have an appointment with my Dr this afternoon to discuss.