People can suffer different symptoms from their headaches although there can also be many shared similar symptoms. The pain often is felt behind the eyes, across the forehead or right between the eyes and can result in an inability to concentrate, mild to extreme fatigue and weariness.
Symptoms of Tension Headache
The symptoms of this type of headache may differ among individuals but tension headaches more often cause pain in the top, sides and front of the head and may even be felt in all of those areas all at once. People often characterize tension headache as mild to moderate, constant and throbbing. Tension headaches are often felt around the middle of day. They can endure for a few minutes, hours or even for many days.
Tension headaches can switch on and off and their symptoms can fluctuate in severity. Chronic tension headaches exemplify typical tension headache symptoms that can endure for long periods of time. Pain gained from chronic tension headaches:
- Slowly progresses the whole day
- Is felt in fluctuating degrees of severity
People with chronic tension headaches live a poor quality of life since the pain they feel everyday seriously affects their ability to concentrate and their everyday regular routines. To categorize your headache as a chronic tension headache, the symptoms should last for more than half the days in a month.
Besides the typical headache symptoms like throbbing, dull pain felt across the head and overarches, headaches can also result in other negative consequences. There can be pain felt from tension headaches immediately when you wake up or can even cause the person to wake up while sleeping from the pain. Also, the pain makes sleeping difficult for the person. Other symptoms that a typical headache can bring include:
- Photophobia – Sensitivity to light
- Aching muscles
- Problem looking at televisions or computer screens
- Fatigue
- Irritability
There are a lot of people who experience worse kinds of headaches than tension headaches or any other kinds of headaches can give. The worst kind of headache is called migraine and it generates:
- Acute pain between and behind the eyes
- Muscle aches
- Sinus problems
- Nausea
- Photophobia – People with migraine say that when they suffer from a migraine attack, they often look for a cool dark room that helps lessen their pain symptoms.
Migraines can cause pain in virtually all parts of the head also even affecting the neck as well. They do have a severe effect on people’s lives and cause them to lie down when a migraine attack comes and rest till the attack dissipates. For migraines, over-the-counter analgesics are prescribed by doctors most of the time. Other symptoms that can manifest with migraine can involve
- Watery eyes
- Irritability
- Drowsiness
Jamie Catlett is a licensed and board certified acupuncturist in Jacksonville, FL and the founder of Jacksonville Acupuncture Clinic.