I get sinus headaches with no other symptoms of cold or allergy. I assume it is made worse by dryness - since it is almost always in the winter - but also seems to happen randomly and I think it is the weather.
I googled this exact question and got a lot of people talking about how a change in pressure brings on a headache so, not necessarily just falling pressure? because that would be my guess at this point.
I live in the NE panhandle where it is dry, dusty and frequently windy. but I honestly don’t notice that makes any difference.
so I can see this thread getting moved but I really wanted it to be more a fact quest than I “this is my experience” sharing, because I can google those. but I appreciate your answer anyway.
It is an individual thing, but for my family, it’s the CHANGE in pressure. Our headache sufferers can tell you 24 hours before the Santa Ana winds start blowing!
Headaches are uniquely individual experiences, and many generality statements like you’ve culled (“Self-diagnosed sinus headache is nearly always migraine (~90% of the time)”) are typically made by scientific-types who do not suffer from chronic headaches themselves.
Migraine sufferers do not have one single headache type. They have many TRIGGERS which can bring on a migraine. For people who have complex migraines, the diagnosis becomes even more murky.
A person who says, “I have a sinus headache” will often make that statement because the sinus-area of the head HURTS. You don’t need to have a stuffed up nose and green crap draining from your nostrils in order to have painful sinuses. Many sinus remedies can alleviate the pain from “sore sinuses,” and so it’s a legitimate label.
~VOW
I have chronic rhinitis and chronic sinusitis – completely different symptoms I think, although the former sometimes complicates into the latter.
I take Beconase or Rhinocort(*) regularly to control the rhinitis. With the pollens(?) where I live, that’s a necessity. (*I’m not sure whether Beconase or Rhinocort is better for me – good pharmacies are few and far between where I live, so I just take whichever is available. )
For the sinusitis, I irrigate with saline (or steam!) frequently. I had a polypectomy once … I wonder if I’m due for another …
Last time I had a sinus headache that I was sure was weather-related, I was within a few miles of a storm system that was generating (admittedly small) tornadoes.
The only time I get a headache is when there is a big change in the barometric pressure. Pain relievers (aspirin, etc.) don’t do anything for them; pseudoephedrine stops them.
These headaches are almost always accompanied by a very tight feeling in the muscles that run down the back of the neck and out toward the shoulders.
For me it’s the shift in Barometric pressure that really can trigger the big headache. Sandy really pounded my poor head, though my neighbourhood got little more than rain and wind. When the storm and the front collided, I read they’d recorded a barometric pressure, in one location, that was the lowest they’d ever seen, since record keeping began!
Sometimes the worst storm systems leave me unaffected as they pass through, and other times I am reduced to lying on my couch and holding my head by a weather system that slowly hangs nearby but never actually hits us. For me, the Autumn is the worst season, but I know others who suffer more through the spring. Everyone is slightly different, in my experience.
(Also, recovering from a concussion like event, appears to have intensified the effect rather dramatically this fall. My brains seems hypersensitive. Ouch!)
Let me know if you find a helpful solution. I have pain that seems to be coming from the maxillary sinuses and I get this pain almost every afternoon. It used to be occasional, associated with weather changes. Now it’s almost every day. I’ve had Xrays, CTscan, neurological work-ups… nobody can find the problem or a solution. I even had my impacted wisdom teeth removed, hoping that would help but it didn’t. The neurologist suggested that it might be a neuralgia, but it really feels like it’s localized in my sinuses.
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