There’s no escaping that incessant headache that can stop you in your tracks and prevent you from doing anything productive for the rest of the day. Chronic headache can be worse, forcing your body to shut down completely until the pain recedes.
So why do we get headache frequently? Is it something in the brain that causes the head to nearly explode in pain? Or is it something else like an allergen or a foreign element that can trigger a painful headache? Here are some possible options!
Headaches and brain: No Relation
Most of us think that something in the brain leads to a bad headache. That’s not true at all. For the brain does not have nerves (which means it cannot detect pain) and so cannot cause a headache even if it wanted to.
The pain you feel in the head (or the brain) usually stems from a place near the brain. This pain is usually picked up the nerve endings located near your head. And that is what actually causes the head to hurt.
Neck Pain
A very common cause for a bad headache happens to be a pain in the neck caused by stress. Stress can cause the muscles in your neck to contract and become sore after some time. This soreness is perceived as pain by the nerve endings which then transport these signals to the brain which in turn causes a dull ache on the sides of the head.
Brain Injury
Even though your brain may not be the immediate cause of a headache, a potential injury can cause it to shut down the pain sensors temporarily. This in turn would make even the slightest of pains unbearable, including the pain in the neck and head muscles, which you usually don’t feel at all.
Eye strain
Long hours in front of the computer can trigger a nasty headache. With overuse, the muscles lining the eyebrows and eye lids become overworked and strained. This in turn would place excess pressure on the respective nerve endings in the head. And this can be a major cause of headache that occur on the front of the head.
Changes in blood flow to the brain
Increased or decreased blood flow to the brain can also trigger nasty headache. While decreased blood flow to the brain (mainly to the cerebral cortex) would cause migraines that usually cause side effects like one sided pain, vomiting, nausea and increased sensitivity to light and sound; increased blood flow can cause cluster headache that seem to occur repeatedly for several weeks (even months in certain cases).
And finally! Symptomatic pain
Certain medical conditions like cold and other viral infections can cause headache as symptoms. Once you get rid of the condition, the headache would automatically disappear.
