What are Vascular Headaches?

A headache is one of the most common ailments that afflict almost all people. It is basically described as a condition of mild to sever pain in the head and the back of the neck. Headache is the second most common malady next to molar pain or toothache. Almost everybody has experienced a headache at least one in their lifetime, with a number experiencing chronic or repeated headache. Headache has a wide variety of causes that range from simple eyestrain to other worse diseases such as encephalitis and meningitis. There are different types of headache such as tension headaches, traction headaches, inflammatory headaches, facial headaches and vascular headaches.

Vascular headaches are one of the major types of headaches. It is actually a group of headaches that include migraine and is believed to be caused by abnormal function of the brain’s blood vessel or vascular system. Blood vessel disturbance and swelling causes vascular headaches which is generally described as severe pain on one or both sides of the head and may include stomach ache and distorted vision.

Migraine is type of vascular headache. It is characterized by severe pain on one or both sides of the head, nausea and/or vomiting and disturbed vision and intolerance to light. There are two common types of migraine. These are classic migraine and common migraines. Classic migraine involves some neurological symptoms such as aura or the appearance of flashing lights or zigzag lines, temporary loss of vision. Other symptoms of classic migraine include difficulty of speech, weakness of limbs, tingling feeling on the face or hands and confusion. Classic migraine causes intense, throbbing, and pounding pain on the forehead, temple, ear, jaw, and around the eye.

Common Migraine on the other hand is not preceded by aura. Symptoms that appear prior to the onset of common migraine is mental “fuzziness”, mood changes, fatigue, unusual retention of fluids, nausea and vomiting as well as diarrhea and increased urination. Common migraine pain may last from three to four days.

There are other types of migraines such as:

• Hemiplegic migraine whose symptoms include temporary paralysis on one or both sides of the body, vision problems, and vertigo which start from 10 to 90 minutes before headache pain begins.

• Ophthalmologic migraine symptoms include pain around the eye with other symptoms such as droopy eyelids, double vision and other sight problems.

• Basilary Artery migraine is caused by a disturbance in a major brain artery and occurs more commonly in adolescent and young adult women. Vertigo, double vision, and poor muscle coordination are the symptoms appearing prior to the onset of headache.

• Status migrainosus can last from 72 hours or longer and is a rare and severe type of migraine with intense pain and nausea that hospitalization is necessary.

Other forms of vascular headaches include toxic headache which arises when a person has fever.  Toxic headaches often accompany fever that comes from conditions such as pneumonia, measles, mumps, tonsillitis and the presence of foreign chemicals in the body. Cluster headaches is also a kind of vascular headache that is characterized by repeated episodes of intense pain and is usually caused by high blood pressure. Cluster headaches are extremely painful and commonly strike men but are rarer than most vascular headaches. Treatment for vascular headache may include medication, biofeedback training, stress reduction, changes in the diet, lifestyle adjustments, regular exercise and others.