Understanding the Different Types of Headaches: What Really Hurts?

Tension headache

Any headache that does not meet the criteria for other headaches, such as migraines and cluster headaches, is called a tension headache. These headaches have no clear cause in your brain. With a headache, all you have is a headache, which doesn’t get worse with a little effort.

The name ‘compression head’ is a bit unfortunate. “There is no scientific evidence that these headaches have anything to do with excessive muscle tension,” says Fronczek. “It has also not been proven that stress gives you headaches.” It’s called a tension headache because it feels like there’s a tight band around your head. Unfortunately, it’s not known what causes these headaches.

There is no pain in your brain

And what exactly hurts? Not your own brain. There are no sensory nerve endings in your brain that can pick up a pain signal and send it to the place in your brain that processes pain. If you poked your brain with a stick or cut out a piece of it, you wouldn’t feel anything.

But to get to your brain, you have to make a hole in your meninges between your skull and your brain. These membranes are sensitive. ‘There are all kinds of dead ends there,’ explained Fronczek. They mostly give their signals through the trigeminal nerve to your brain.

That particular nerve is also responsible for the feeling in your face. ‘If you have a headache, the nerves on your meninges are stimulated for some reason. You will then feel pain.’ It is not known what causes this irritation in a typical headache.

Pulling on drivers
If you were to pull your meninges, it would hurt. Something like this happens, for example, if you have had too little to drink. Or I drank too much the night before. Due to the lack of fluid, the brain can shrink a little, and you will see it: a headache. You have two of these nerves, one for the left side and one for the right side. That’s why you sometimes have a headache on one side.

Migraines are more severe than normal headaches

After tension headaches, migraine is the most common. About 12 percent of people suffer from migraines on a regular basis. Up to 33 percent of women and 13 percent of men have ever had a migraine attack.

Such an attack lasts between one and three days and is usually more painful than a ‘normal’ headache. The pain is usually on one side of your head and you feel like crying or sneezing. If you push yourself physically, the pain increases. You feel nauseous or even vomit. And you often have trouble dealing with light and sounds.

Migraine comes from Latin migraine, which means ‘pain on one side of the head’. The unstressed prefix ‘he-‘ was dropped in French, from which we took the word.

Migraines are caused by excessive nerve stimulation

A little more is known about migraines. Fronczek: ‘We know that the nerve is disturbed in migraine and therefore hypersensitive. This may be due to an inflammatory reaction in that nerve. That is very painful.

Inflammation is often caused by bacteria or a virus. But this is not the case with migraines, because your body causes its own inflammatory response.’ But why does your body do that? Unfortunately, researchers don’t know that at all.

Sex soothes the headache, even by itself

It is not certain why sex relieves some people and not others. However, the researchers suspect that the endorphins which is released during sex and has an analgesic effect, calms migraines. And some people release more endorphins during events between the sheets than others.

According to German researchers, you don’t have to have sex with a partner. Endorphins are released mainly during orgasm, so solo sex can also help.