You would think that diagnosing a headache would be one of the simplest things in the world because almost every adult suffers from headaches and when you suffer from one you indeed know about it. But, in spite of the obvious pain, diagnosing a headache can be a little bit more difficult than you might suppose.



Astonishingly there are no general and definitive tests for use in diagnosing headaches and if you believe that you have a headache and are experiencing pain then all you can really do is to tell your physician how you are feeling and he has to produce a diagnosis on the basis of whatever you say. However, one major problem is that when reporting symptoms descriptions can vary markedly.

Some individuals are not as communicative as others when talking about how they feel and our often limited vocabulary does not always help us either. Saying that you are experiencing a 'stabbing pain' might seem to be a very good description to you but it might not necessarily be very helpful to your physician.

As if all of this was not bad enough diagnosis is made even more difficult by the fact that headaches come in a variety of different types.

Simple tension headaches which result from inflamed facial or neck muscles and constricted head blood vessels amongst other things do not normally get diagnosed professionally as most people simply treat them with analgesics or just wait until they fade.

Migraines, on the other hand, are more intense and are more likely to lead to a visit to your physician although even here approximately half of sufferers never seek professional help.

Physicians are able to make use of a variety of factors to diagnose a particular form of headache and recommend an appropriate treatment and, even though the pain felt is subjective, the form of that pain is an indication of the type of headache. Migraines, for example, on the whole produce intense pulsating or throbbing sensations whereas in tension headaches the pain is usually more constant and diffuse.

Migraine headaches are also generally accompanied by nausea as well as sensitivity to light and sound, cold extremities and several other signs which sufferers recognize. And, as these symptoms tend to be more or less identical from one sufferer to the next, physicians are faced with an objective group of symptoms on which they are able to form a proper diagnosis.

Cluster headaches are typified by a strong pain behind an eye or temple which remains for about 30 minutes to an hour and then returns the next day at around the same time. Cluster headaches can last for weeks and, once more because they are fairly regular, physicians have something to go o when making their diagnosis.

In instances where headaches are the effect of some serious underlying condition like a brain tumor, physicians are able to diagnose this without too much difficulty. For example, CT or MRI scans can be used to look for well documented brain patterns which can connect the headache to the physical problem underlying it.

A headache which tends to worsens over time provides physicians with a clue, as do quickly shifting patterns of pain, and this could for example point to an aneurysm (a weakening of a blood vessel) as the underlying cause.

Diagnosing headaches is a complex business as a result of many different forms of headache and the vast range of symptoms. But the secret is to gather as much objective information as possible from both the sufferer and clinical tests.