Symptoms and treatment of tension headaches

1 Types of the disease

Depending on the frequency of occurrence of HDN, there is:

1. Episodic pain. She annoys a person for less than 15 days during the month, for 2-3 months. Its intensity is rather low.
2. Chronic pain. Moderate painful feelings torment a person more often than 15 days in a month for six months. It is no wonder, that on its background the depression develops further.

2 Causes of

The main cause of discomfort is neck and head muscle tension due to various factors:

• posture disorder,
• inadequate or inadequate rest,
• fatigue,
• anxiety,
• mental or emotional stress, stress and depression,
• starvation.

Increased muscle tone can develop due to a prolonged stay in an uncomfortable or static position, when a person strains his eyes, muscles of the shoulder girdle, neck and head. Surely you noticed that the head hurts after a long work at the computer, after a long sitting at the wheel in the car, especially if you were traveling in the evening or at night, straining your eyesight. A similar tension is observed in people engaged in painstaking work, for example, associated with soldering, embroidering, knitting and sewing. Sometimes, if the pain has just begun, it passes after a small charge or a short rest in a lying position on a hard surface.

People unconsciously strain the muscles of the neck and head in stressful situations, for example, when they quarrel with someone at home or in the service, worry about children, are late or can not perform the work in due time. Constant anxiety and latent depression can lead to chronic tension headaches. It happens that the patient does not even know that he is suffering from depression, although during the interview the doctor complains not only of the tension headache, but also of fatigue, constant fatigue, irritability, sleep disturbances and lack of appetite.

Causes of tension headaches may occur in long-term use of hormonal contraceptives, analgesics or tranquilizers. Hormonal drugs often cause a headache, it can be observed during the first month of admission, continuously or after drug cancellation. In this case, to understand whether the problem lies precisely in this remedy, you will have to switch to another drug. If you took analgesics or tranquilizers for several days in a row, they should be canceled, after consulting a doctor, and for some time to refrain from using such medications.

Headache can be caused by a simultaneous combination of several provoking factors, for example, depression and muscle tension. It is very important for the doctor to understand the root cause of the headache in order to choose the most effective treatment option.

3 Clinical picture

Pain pain, the treatment of which depends on the root cause of the disease, has the following symptoms. They need to be known to simplify the diagnosis, and to understand what kind of pain you are concerned about:

1. A headache attack lasts from half an hour to a week. HGB tension worries almost every day, but not less than 15 days in a month.
2. The pain itself is characterized as compressive or constrictive - like a hoop, put on the head, or a vise that squeezes the skull. It is never pulsating.
3. Weak or moderate soreness has bilateral localization, but it can be more intense on one side.
4. Doing daily work, tilting and squats do not add to the pain. However, tension headaches reduce efficiency, distract and interfere with concentration.
5. During the period of activation of GBN, it is difficult for a person to fall asleep, it can be troubled by insomnia, absent-mindedness, irritability and unpleasant sensations in the muscles of the neck. Loud sounds and bright light do not increase pain, but irritate the patient.

Headache begins with the occipital part of the head and extends to the temples and temechochka or in the opposite direction. This kind of pain occurs during the day and intensifies by the evening. Some patients complain that because of the pain, nausea appears and the appetite disappears. HDN can occur in children and adults of different age groups.

4 Medical measures

If you are occasionally disturbed by single cases of headaches, do not worry, you may have enough small changes in the mode of work and rest.

• Work and rest mode

View your day in detail - how much time you work, what exactly do you do, in what position you sit, do you take a break( or try to finish it quickly, to the detriment of the recommended breaks).In addition, always pay attention to the posture while working at the computer. The person should sit with a straight back, leaning with a loin on a back of an armchair or a chair. Hands lie on the keyboard so that there is a right angle between the humerus and forearm. The monitor should be installed so that the eyes are looking at the center of the screen. Remember that a pose with a head lowered or thrown back causes tension in the muscles of the neck and shoulder girdle.

Some people just need to enter 5-minute breaks when working on the computer every 40-50 minutes. At this time, you need to do a little warm-up - to walk around, make corners, swing your arms, perform eye exercises, etc. Independently stretch the muscles of the collar zone. If you are at home and feel that the head starts to ache, lie in a hot bath or put a warm water bottle on the back of your neck. This will relax the muscles and bring relief.

Night sleep should be at least 6-8 hours, on a low comfortable pillow and orthopedic mattress in a dark room. Before going to bed, take care of airing. Advice for those who get up very early: try to finish things in the evening so that you go to bed early. If you do not have time, postpone it for tomorrow. Insufficient rest will eventually turn into an attack of cephalalgia, and with a headache you will not have the strength and desire to do something about the house and for your loved ones.

5 Nutrition and outdoor activities

Fasting, a strict diet or improper diet can provoke a headache. To exclude this item from the list of possible causes of your suffering, take care of food. Choose a low-calorie balanced diet, including the normal volume of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, but do not starve.

Think about systematically doing sports. Choose what you like best and fit into your work schedule: jogging, cycling, fitness, dancing, fitness, aerobics, yoga, etc. It is advisable to increase your stay in the open air. In extreme cases, go to work on foot and avoid movement on the elevator.

6 Coping with stress and depression

Many people face stressful situations at work, which can not be avoided. In this case, you need to learn how to deal with them, for example, with the help of relaxation exercises or breathing exercises. This is an incredibly effective thing, especially if you can practice it all the time. In stores you can find many different audio and video training videos on similar topics.

By the way, to combat the effects of stress can be through active sports training. The main thing is not to postpone them for a few days, but to rush to the fitness center. Twist the pedals of a bicycle or move on an elliptical simulator, and you will immediately feel relieved. In addition, after exhausting physical exertion, a person feels a surge of positive emotions.

If you have a constantly bad or depressed mood, do not like anything, life is sad and joyless, most likely, you have depression. The triggered depression can provoke a chronic HDN, with which you can not fight on your own. Talk with the doctor, he will advise how best to get out of this vicious circle of pain and bad mood.

7 Use of analgesics

If the treatment of tension headache with simple non-pharmacological methods did not help, it will be necessary to connect the drugs. For an episodic tension headache, Paracetamol is suitable. Taking 1 tablet of Paracetamol or Citramon at the very beginning of the attack very often relieves pain. However, at the peak of the attack, these drugs will no longer give appreciable relief. The next tablet of Paracetamol can be drunk only after 4 hours, if by this time the head has not passed. In some cases, complex medicines containing, in addition to the analgesic, also an antispasmodic, for example, No-Shpalgin, which includes Drotaverin, Paracetamol, and Codeine, may be more effective.

Unfortunately, frequent taking pain medications can cause the same headaches. For this reason, you need to consult a doctor, and not self-medicate. If you often suffer from headaches and drink tablets, you noticed that they do not always help, it is better to be properly screened and treated under the guidance of a neurologist. The doctor is better versed in the symptoms of a particular type of headache, so you can advise the most effective drug in your case.

Ibuprofen, Analgin, Acetylsalicylic acid, Anopyrin, Acetaminophen, Acifein, Pentalgin, Baralgin, Spazgan and other medications cope better with pain. It is not possible to say definitely which tool will help you. True, experiments and frequent administration of such drugs are always badly reflected in the state of the gastrointestinal tract. Sluggish gastritis can quickly turn into an ulcer or latent bleeding. For this reason, medication should not be taken longer than 3-4 consecutive days, so this is not an option for treating tension headaches that occur up to 15 times a month.

A reasonable question arises: "How to treat a tension headache?".The answer can be given by a neurologist, but quite often physicians prescribe muscle relaxants and antidepressants.

8 Chronic course of the disease

A person suffering from chronic GBN says that the head hurts constantly, and the periods of remission are very short. To understand what exactly triggers an attack of pain, the doctor will advise you to keep a special diary in which you need to write down when the headache began, which she thought was caused, nervous, swore, what they were doing before, etc. Thanks to these recordsthe doctor will be able to understand the root cause of headaches and act on it.

When diagnosed, the specialist must differentiate chronic HDN from migraine and pain associated with the abolition of analgesics, as well as brain tumors and other conditions that cause increased intracranial pressure. Preventive treatment of chronic HDN is carried out by antidepressants, muscle relaxants and some drugs used in the treatment of epilepsy. Daily intake of medicines for several months often relieves the patient from constant suffering for a long time. So do not be surprised at the strange set of drugs.

Symptoms and treatment of tension headache in different people can vary slightly, so the doctor acts individually in each case. The main thing is to answer truthfully the questions asked by the doctor and strictly follow his recommendations.