The complete Headache guide Remove the Headache not the Head

Explore the global burden of headache and migraine, a common disability across adults and children in primary care, and review risk factors including female sex, obesity, and sleep problems.

Evaluate headache causes during a visit to the doctor's office by gathering history, identifying red flags, and planning imaging and examinations.

Explore migraine as a primary headache syndrome, its features, aura types, and international diagnostic criteria. Understand how migraine differs from tension-type headache and its impact on the world.

Identify migraine triggers such as glare, bright lights, sounds, hunger, stress, sleep changes, hormones, and alcohol, and explain trigeminal activation and serotonin involvement in vascular changes.

Assess migraine impact with the MIDAS score to tailor individualized management. Identify triggers, apply a regulated lifestyle, and use NSAIDs, 5-HT receptor agonists, or dopamine antagonists when necessary.

Assess acute migraine drugs, including NSAIDs and naproxen–sumatriptan combos, 5-HT receptor agonists, ergotamines, dopamine antagonists, noting absorption, recurrence, contraindications, and medication overuse headaches.

Describe preventive migraine treatments for patients with four or more attacks per month, outlining daily medications, and a stepwise approach from beta blockers and anti-convulsants to antidepressants.

Learn about tension-type headache, a bilateral, pressure-like head pain with neck involvement and no migraine features. Distinguish it from migraine by the absence of nausea, photophobia, and phonophobia.

Explore cluster headache, a trigeminal autonomic cephalalgia marked by one-sided, excruciating eye–orbital pain, cranial autonomic symptoms, and seasonal, periodic attacks.

Primary cough headache is a sudden generalized headache triggered by coughing and lasting minutes to hours; it is preventable by avoiding triggers and requires exclusion of CSF or vascular causes.

Primary exercise headache presents with pulsatile, migraine-like pain triggered by exercise, lasting minutes to hours, prevented by gradual exertion and avoiding hot weather; prophylaxis may include indomethacin, ergotamine, dihydroergotamine, methysergide.

Explains primary headache associated with sexual activity, its three forms, risks of brain hemorrhage from ruptured berry aneurysm, and management with reassurance and meds like propranolol.

Explore primary headaches beyond the common types, including cold stimulus brain freeze headaches, nummular headaches, and hypnic headaches, with diagnostic considerations and management options.

Explore secondary headaches from meningitis, intracranial hemorrhage, and brain tumors. Identify diagnostic steps like lumbar puncture and CT imaging, and recognize fever, neck stiffness, and sudden severe pain.

Explore sinus headache from rhinosinusitis, its front-head pain, and relief with nasal decongestants; differentiate it from migraine or tension-type headache. Temporal arteritis in the elderly requires urgent prednisone and biopsy.

Explore glaucoma as a pressure-related eye disease causing severe headaches needing urgent care, and understand low csf volume headaches from csf leaks after lumbar puncture and post-traumatic headaches.

Explore migraines, tension-type headaches, cluster headaches, and secondary headaches, and learn how triggers, symptoms, and a headache diary guide diagnosis and tailored treatment.