Causes of Chronic Headaches

What are the causes of chronic headaches? There are a wide variety of causes. These range from eyestrain and sinusitis to life-threatening conditions such as encephalitis, meningitis, cerebral aneurysms and brain tumors.

In some cases it is very easy to determine what is causing your headaches. If you suffered head trauma and now have chronic headaches, it is easy to figure out what caused them.

Constriction and dilation of blood vessels

At one time, scientists and doctors believed that migraine headaches were caused by the constriction and dilation of blood vessels and that tension headaches were caused by muscle contraction. While scientists still believe that these play a part in causing headaches, a much more complicated explanation is beginning to emerge. For that matter, many scientists now speculate that both migraine and tension headaches have the same origin in the brain.

A new theory

One new theory holds that headache pain begins with the trigeminal nerve. This nerve, which is located in the brainstem and is the largest in the head, carries sensory impulses to and from the face. When this nerve is stimulated, for example by a certain headache trigger, it releases a burst of neurotransmitters. In turn, this normally prompts release of yet another neurotransmitter called serotonin.

It is further thought that under normal circumstances, increased serotonin levels counteract pain signals from the trigeminal nerve.

A Clear relationship

But, in people suffering from a headache, serotonin levels often prove to be too low. In fact, scientific tests have proved a clear relationship between headache and serotonin levels. In one experiment, test subjects got headaches when interjected with a drug that depleted their serotonin level. Likewise, the headache went away when they were injected with serotonin.

A lack of serotonin has also been implicated in depression and sleep disorders -- two problems that afflict many of those suffering from chronic headaches.

Another theory holds that teeth clenching may be the main cause of migraine headaches as teeth clenching causes a chronic contraction of the temporalis or temporal muscle.

Tension-type headaches

It has also been shown that patients with chronic tension-type headaches show increased muscle and skin pain sensitivity. And the hyperexcitability of central noriceptive neurons in the trigeminal, spinal nucleus, thalamus, and cerebral cortex, is believed to be involved in the cause of chronic tension-type headache.

Headaches and hormones

Because women get migraine headaches more than men, there is strong evidence that there is a relationship between hormones and this type of headache. Another important fact supporting this theory is that women do not get migraine headaches until after puberty when they begin to produce higher levels of female hormones.

Also, sixty percent of women with migraines report that their headaches happen more often before, during or after menstruation which is when hormone levels change. This type of headache is actually known as a menstrual migraine.

Headaches and pregnancy

Third, headaches tend to lessen in number during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy and headaches often stop for menopausal women or get worse - again proving a relationship between hormones and headaches.

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