Headache is a universal ailment: we all get headaches at some time.

There are many different causes for headache. Common causes are:

  • Tension headache – caused by stress and anxiety and tiredness; can be quite severe and felt over any area of the head & neck (neck stiffness is quite common).
  • Migraine – very specific type of headache that involves vision changes, nausea, and sudden severe attacks).
  • Sinus congestion  – causes headache around the face and eyes mainly; associated with sneezing and or nasal stuffiness.

Tension headache is the most common by far but it is really important to see your doctor about headache and not just to get pills (pain pills can actually cause headaches to get worse over time) but to disucss what is causing the headaches and how to prevent/manage them.

More-serious or sinister causes for headache (e.g. brain cancer, meningitis) are much less common – these possibilities should not be ignored of course (see your doctor) but on balance too many people with headache worry exclusively about this sort of thing when they might be better off considering the lifestyle issues that are more-likely to be at the root of the headache problem.

In many cases headaches are really caused by life and lifestyle issues such as tiredness and stress: the “easy” approach of simply taking painkillers tends to make this worse over time so the very best advice on headaches is to try to identify and address the cause.