Headaches are a global bane.
A headache is one of the most common disorders of the central nervous system. Everyone has suffered a headache at some point in their lives. Many people deal with them quite often.
They strike quietly and without warning, affecting your mood and diminishing your energy. The frequency and intensity of headaches differ from person to person.
Headache disorders are of three types:
Tension headaches: This is the most common type of headache. It is characterized by persistent pain on both sides of the head and may be accompanied by a heavy feeling in the head and behind the eyes, as well as occasional tightening of the neck muscles.
Migraines: A migraine is a throbbing headache, usually affecting one side of the head. Bright lights, certain smells and loud sounds often trigger it. Nausea, vomiting and neck pain usually accompany it. A migraine disrupts routine activity because the pain intensifies with activity.
Cluster headaches: Cluster headaches strike during a certain period each year, during which they occur 2 or 3 times daily and persist over a few weeks up to a few months. A cluster headache usually breaks a person’s sleep an hour or two after going to bed and the pain can be more intense than a migraine, although it does not last as long.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), people and doctors throughout the world severely undermine, underestimate and undertreat headaches, and medical practitioners rarely properly diagnose headache disorders.
Moreover, people often disregard a headache as a non-serious inconvenience that will subside in a matter of time. But a seemingly harmless headache could have serious implications.
Here are 10 warning signs that indicate your headache could be dangerous.
1. Disruptive First Headache with Vision Impairment
Giant cell arteritis (GCA), or temporal arteritis, is a disorder in which the arteries of your head, especially those running through your temples, become inflamed.
If you have never had a headache, but find yourself suddenly struck with a painful one that disrupts your daily routine, it may be a symptom of GCA.
A headache and visual disturbances are symptoms most frequently associated with GCA, according to a 2008 study published in the Canadian Journal of Ophthalmology.
This type of headache is a throbbing, persistent headache usually occurring in the upper neck region, behind the eyes and at the back of the head.
These areas may feel tender when touched, and may be accompanied with a burning sensation. The scalp may also feel tender upon contact with a comb, temples of eyeglasses or a hat.
Visual blurring and loss of vision usually accompany these headaches. If left untreated, GCA can progress to blindness and stroke.
2. Thunderclap Headache
As the name recommends, a thunderclap cerebral pain strikes all of a sudden like a lightning jolt, causing torment that crests in power inside 60 seconds, perseveres and afterward dies down more often than not following 60 minutes.
Thunderclap cerebral pains are typically a side effect of subarachnoid discharge. A sudden migraine is the essential element of subarachnoid drain, as indicated by a recent report distributed in The Lancet.
It is a conceivably lethal condition that outcomes in swollen cerebrum veins, which at last break and seep in, and all around, your mind. It can be lethal in itself, and can likewise prompt a stroke.
A huge dominant part of subarachnoid drain patients depicted the related cerebral pain as “the most exceedingly bad migraine of their life”, as per a recent report distributed in the British Medical Journal.
Queasiness, spewing and mental perplexity may be related manifestations.
3. Progressive Headache with One-Sided Numbness and Weakness
The heart pumps blood up to the brain through the arteries. After it is utilized by the brain for basic functions, the brain returns the blood back to the heart through channels called venous sinuses.
Often, these sinuses get clogged, causing a condition called cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT), which could lead to an accumulation of blood, and subsequent bleeding in and around the brain. This is a major cause of strokes.
A headache that persists with symptoms progressing over a few days, up to a week or more, could indicate CVT. The headache is usually the first and most commonly occurring symptom of CVT, according to a 2004 study published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
It is usually described as a sharp pain that occurs on one side and may be accompanied by speech and vision impairment, as well as sensitivity to light and loud sounds.
One of its defining characteristics is weakness and numbness on one side of the head, down to the shoulders and arms.
4. Headache with Neck & Face Pain
The carotid arteries are the four arteries along the sides of your neck delivering blood from your heart to your neck, face, ears and head.
Often, one of those arteries may suffer a tear, allowing blood to enter and fill up space between the different layers of the arteries. This separates them. This is called carotid artery dissection (CAD).
As the blood accumulates, it clots and prevents the flow of fresh blood from the heart to the brain. Eventually, this leads to a stroke.
The most commonly reported symptoms of CAD are sudden and intense headaches as well as neck pain, according to a 2004 study published in the Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association.
A headache accompanied by pain in the neck and face is a sign of oxygen deprivation and may indicate the development of CAD.
5. Headache after Risky Sexual Behavior
Headaches are the primary and most persistent symptom of HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus.
Out of 131 patients with primary HIV, 45.8 percent reported tension-associated headaches, 16 percent reported migraines and 6.1 percent reported other types of headaches, according to a 2000 study published in Pain.
If you suffer from primary headaches like migraines and tension headaches, they may not signify any underlying illness, or they may indicate that HIV is in its initial stages.
However, secondary headaches like sinus headaches or those related to other diseases like meningitis, usually signify HIV that has progressed, undermining the immune system severely and allowing diseases to strike.
6. Headache with a Stiff Neck
Meningitis is a disorder characterized by the inflammation of certain membranes that cover the brain. It can be fatal as its location is so close to the brain.
If you have a headache characterized by a shooting pain and your neck feels excessively stiff, you are probably suffering from meningitis.
Ninety-five percent of meningitis patients reported a headache, stiff neck, fever and mental disorientation as the primary symptoms, according to a 2004 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
In most cases of meningitis, the headache might be a migraine, according to a 2000 study published in Cephalalgia.