Which of us did not suffer from headaches? More often, less often, strongly or weakly, the whole head or only its separate parts ... In one form or another, the headache is familiar to almost everyone. Statistics say that 80% of people have headaches at least once a year. According to neurologists, this malaise should not be dismissed - it’ll hurt, they say, and pass. If you have a headache - you should figure out the reasons.
Causes of Headaches
According to doctors, a headache can accompany about fifty different diseases. Here are just a few of them:
- change (increase or decrease) in blood pressure;
- infectious diseases (it can be like brain diseases - meningitis, encephalitis, cerebral arteriosclerosis, and other infectious diseases - flu, tonsillitis, pneumonia, etc.);
- different types of poisoning (including food or alcohol - headaches with a hangover can also be attributed here);
- hormonal disorders, including premenstrual syndrome, pregnancy, etc .;
- psycho-emotional overstrain, neurosis;
- diseases of the gastrointestinal tract;
- allergies
- head injuries;
- tumors;
- weather changes.
When should you visit a neurologist?
As you can see, the causes of a headache are very, very many. If this symptom bothers you regularly, you should definitely visit a neurologist. You should especially hurry up with a visit if the nature of the headache is completely new, unusual for you, as well as in those cases if:
- you have to use painkillers at least once a week;
- the pain arose suddenly and has an "explosive" character;
- you suspect that the headache was provoked by drugs that you drink for a different reason;
- you began to sleep longer or experience unusual drowsiness previously;
- headache appeared after a head injury, even if it is just a slight bruise;
- “In company” with a headache, you feel weakness in your limbs, experience inhibition, problems with speech or understanding of others.
Remember: only a doctor can determine the cause of an ailment and give specific advice on what to take from a headache.
Pressure and headache
Often pain becomes a manifestation of high or low blood pressure. Headache with high blood pressure - a phenomenon so frequent that when it appears, many immediately grab onto the tonometer.
Why does the pressure rise?
So our body is arranged that with the slightest alarm or excitement, our blood pressure rises. When the excitement ceases, the pressure, in theory, should return to its original level. However, according to some doctors, the pressure does not always return to its original value, but stops at a slightly higher level than initially.
It is known that salt helps to increase blood pressure. Science knows African tribes that traditionally do not eat salty foods. In such tribes, hypertension is a big wonder.
Another factor influencing the increase in pressure is overweight. It is estimated that about 4 kilometers of blood capillaries are required for the blood supply of each kilogram of fat cells. With an increase in the length of the vascular system, the heart has to work with an additional load in order to push blood through all the tissues of the body. Increased cardiac activity causes high blood pressure.
Does a headache always occur with high blood pressure?
Oddly enough, far from always. According to the World Health Organization, a third of hypertensive patients do not experience any discomfort. They have practically no headaches, and they learn about the disease quite by accident during a physical examination or by measuring pressure “for the sake of interest”.
For the development of a headache, the fact of hypertension is not so much important as the violation of vascular tone - doctors call this phenomenon vascular dystonia. Normally, with an increase in blood pressure, the walls of the blood vessels expand, and with a decrease, on the contrary, they narrow, thus compensating for changes in pressure. With dystonia, the walls of the vessels cannot properly respond to increased pressure. Blood pressure on the walls of blood vessels causes irritation of nerve receptors in them. Impulses from these receptors enter the brain and are perceived by the body as a headache.
Hypertonic disease
This disease, the main symptom of which is high blood pressure. At the very beginning of the development of hypertension, the headache is unstable. It can occur if the patient happened to overwork or go to stuffy, smoky rooms. The head may also become ill after drinking alcohol. Throbbing pain can occur anywhere, but most often it is the back of the head or temples. It occurs suddenly and quickly passes. At this stage, it would be a mistake to immediately grab onto medication. You need to remember that you can not take a pill for a headache, but just take a walk in the fresh air.
In the later stages of hypertension, headache has another cause. Not only vascular, but also intracranial pressure rises. The pain is accompanied by a feeling of severe heaviness in the head and general weakness. The skin becomes cyanotic. Seizures of a sharp headache with dizziness, vomiting, loss of consciousness are possible.
How to treat hypertensive headaches?
With increased pressure, pills for a headache are not the best solution. In any case, do not grab them right away. It is better to try other remedies for high blood pressure first. For example, pay attention to your daily routine. Try to relax more, allocate enough time for sleep and walks. In the initial stages of hypertension with elevated pressure, headache pills can be successfully replaced with a half-hour walk in the forest or in the park.
It is also worth changing your diet. Reduce the amount of table salt in the diet and abandon other foods that provoke an increase in pressure: various margarines, mayonnaise, smoked pickles, as well as fatty meats (such as goose and ducklings, pork, lamb), strong meat broths. Alcohol, flour products, eggs are also undesirable (they can be eaten up to three pieces a week). Sugar is usually recommended to replace honey, sweets - dried fruits. It is very desirable to increase the amount of boiled fish, seafood, sour-milk products in the diet. Practice shows that lifestyle changes are often enough to get rid of a headache with high blood pressure.
If the daily routine and diet have not led to the desired results, and the “what to take from the headache” problem still bothers you, try to take a foot bath with a water temperature of 45 degrees for a quarter hour.
If you still can not do without medication, try herbal remedies for high blood pressure. Brew yourself an herbal pick with motherwort or valerian, or - even easier - take a tincture of these herbs (30 drops are enough). The Bromcamfort tablet is also suitable. These remedies are especially indicated if you are concerned about high upper pressure.
Blood Pressure Relievers
If you can’t cope with hypertension without medication, the doctor will prescribe you pills for high blood pressure, the list of which is very long. They are usually divided into several categories depending on the mechanism of their effect on the body.
Sedatives
They help to cope with stress, reduce the production of adrenaline, which, among other things, causes an increase in pressure. These include valerian and motherwort in herbal preparations or in the form of tinctures, as well as complex preparations of valerian ("Cardiovalen", "Valocordin", etc.) However, when taking these drugs, it should be borne in mind that they somewhat inhibit the body's reactions. Sometimes it can be difficult to lead an active lifestyle while taking these drugs.
Vasodilator drugs
They are also used under high pressure. Tablets from this type of headache affect the walls of blood vessels, causing them to expand, and thereby lower blood pressure.
These drugs are divided into:
- Myotropic - those that act directly on the muscles of the blood vessels (No-shpa, Papaverin, etc.).
- Neurotropic. They act on the nervous system, through it causing vasodilation and, as a result, lowering blood pressure ("Aminazin", "Nitroglycerin", "Phentolamine").
It should be noted that these drugs can increase the heartbeat, and sometimes cause dizziness. Particularly cautious of such drugs should be elderly people suffering from atherosclerosis.
Diuretics, or diuretics
Everyone knows that sodium salts provoke an increase in blood pressure. So, getting rid of excess salt with increased excretion of urine, we can easily reduce the pressure to normal values. However, the ease of this method is quite misleading. Do not forget that along with sodium, diuretics (Hypothiazide, Triamteren, Indapamide, and many others) also excrete potassium, which is necessary for the functioning of the nervous system, kidneys, intestines, which is involved in many important biochemical processes. True, drug manufacturers have long taken this point into account and came up with potassium-sparing diuretics (such as Amyloride or Veroshpiron), but this invention does not reduce to zero all possible side effects of diuretics. It is worth remembering that an overdose of diuretics can lead to an increase in cholesterol, reduce male potency, lead to sleep disturbances and even cause diabetes.
Drugs acting at the intracellular level
This includes several groups of drugs. These are, for example, calcium antagonists (Verapamil, Diltiazem, Nifedipine), which are often prescribed for patients with atherosclerosis. Or angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (Captopril, Enalapril, etc.). They are often chosen if the patient has impaired renal function along with high blood pressure. Beta-blockers (Anaprilin, Atenolol, Carvedilol, etc.) often become the drug of choice for those suffering from thyroid diseases.
Only a few high blood pressure pills are mentioned in this article. The list of all such drugs is incredibly huge. Choosing what is right for you, you need to consider many factors. For example, if you have high upper pressure, you should lower it with soothing medications, if the lower value “jumps” - in this case, you better use diuretics.
The dangers of self-medication
However, it would be a big mistake to engage in the selection of medicines on their own, without the recommendation of specialists. A person without a medical education is simply not able to take everything into account and foresee it, and choosing a drug at random, using the “poke method”, can lead to unpredictable consequences. Do not experiment with your health, seek help from a doctor!
Unfortunately, many people, suffering from a headache, are in a hurry not to the doctor, but to the pharmacy to buy the drug on their own with high blood pressure. Pills for headaches that are sold over the counter, according to many, are practically harmless and allow you to get rid of the problem without bothering to visit a doctor. Doctors say that the "epidemic" of self-
medication with painkillers takes on a terrifying scale and resembles a social disaster.
World statistics cites scary figures. Overuse of painkillers leads to hundreds of thousands of adverse reactions every year. Tens of thousands of fans "swallow a pill and run for business" for a long time end up in hospitals.
Many people are of the opinion that headache with high blood pressure is perfectly relieved by painkillers (analgin, paracetamol and many other tablets that are calmly sold in pharmacies without a prescription). And if so, then there is no need to go to the doctor. But analgesics so beloved by many of us do not cure at all, but only relieve pain. This may seem paradoxical, but with regular use of painkillers, the headache intensifies. It occurs more and more often, “light” intervals appear more and more rarely when the head does not hurt at all. Headache gradually turns into daily torture.
Worse, the prolonged use of analgesics leads to changes in the composition of the blood and, as a result, to a deterioration in immunity. But frequent colds are not the hardest payback for self-medication. Following the blood, the liver, kidneys, gastrointestinal tract and other organs begin to suffer.
As you can see, self-medication is not as harmless as it seems. Therefore, being interested in various sources of his illness and methods of its treatment, we will still leave the choice of therapy to professional doctors.