A person having a headache has discomfort or pain beneath the scalp or forehead, behind the eyes, or arising from the head or upper neck. According to the World Health Organization, headaches may occur occasionally or frequently, they are still the most common nervous system disorder, afflicting half of the adult population at least once a year.
Headaches can vary from annoying to extremely painful to throbbing, squeezing, or constant or intermittent pain in the back of the head and upper neck or behind the eyes. While some people may feel tightness or pressure at the temples. The most common cause of headaches is muscle tension. Some common causes of headaches may include fever, head injury, viral infections, sinusitis, and migraines. Headaches can be the body’s reaction to emotional stress, grief, too much or too little sleep, or depression.
Meanwhile, the type of foods you eat can be a triggering cause for headaches, if you experience headaches after eating a certain kinds of food then you must start avoiding it. Foods like alcohol, chocolate, and caffeine, have been identified as common migraine triggers. According to reports, Noah Rosen, MD, director of the Headache Institute at North Shore–LIJ Health System in Great Neck, New York has said, “It is not unusual at all for food to trigger migraines or other types of headaches.” There are a few classic foods that trigger headaches in many people, but many different foods can trigger headaches for certain individuals. That’s why following a migraine diet or keeping a food diary to document your headaches is a good idea.
“Food trigger is more important for patients with migraine, food triggers don’t really happen with normal muscle tensions or other secondary headaches, but with migraine affected people it is more common. But among these, the most important trigger is not eating on time or the prolonged gap between the meals. So, if you are the one who has this problem should start eating on time and must avoid the time gap, and should start the regularity of meals on time,” said Dr Vinit Suri, Senior Consultant Neurosciences, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals.
He said, “each individual person should identify which food triggers their headaches because food triggers are uncommon and usually one should try to look into cheese, chocolate, alcohol and Chinese food with Ajino moto and if you are having headaches after eating these foods then you should avoid them. But the most important point is that one should not avoid the meal and should eat on time.”
What Tests Should I Go For The Diagnosis Of My Headache?
Dr Vinit said, “Headache is actually a pattern recognition, normally none of the tests shows a primary headache, tests are generally done to rule out the secondary headache. The secondary headache would be like sinusitis or maybe like a tapeworm in the brain or a tumour or trauma in the brain so usually the doctor after testing based on the history one can understand which kind of a headache it is. For primary headache one usually do not require any investigation but for secondary headache one may need citi scan or Citi angiography or some blood tests or ESR, CRP etc.