What Are Chronic Tension Headaches?
Owen Jones | August 30, 2010There are so many sorts of headache and headaches are so common, that there is a very good chance that everyone you know has had them or still gets them. The reasons why people have headaches are just as wide-ranging. It could be stress, over-medication, migraine, lack of calories or tension. One of the worst kinds is chronic tension headaches.
A normal tension headache feels as if a strap is being done up tightly around your forehead, but they do not have a tendency to last very long and they are few and far between. A chronic tension headache is the same, but it may come every day or even several times a day. A headache is classed as a chronic tension headache if you get a tension headache more than fifteen times in a month for several consecutive months.
Therefore, if you think that you are suffering from this type of headache, start to write notes in a diary. When? Where? How bad? How long it lasted? And anything else that you think may be relevant, like what you have eaten or done that day and the day before. You may become aware of a connection to work or diet.
Some sufferers explain the pain as like having a very tight strap wrapped around their head, others say the sensation of constriction goes down as far as their shoulders. In general, sufferers of tension and chronic tension headaches agree, that the pain is strongest in the forehead, then along the sides of the head and occasionally at the back too.
They say that the normal level of pain is a dull ache which can be mild to moderate in intensity. It is more of a nagging, always-on pain than a sharp, distracting pain.
Chronic tension headaches appear to be early risers, that is, some people wake up with them and others say that they begin just after they get up in the morning. It is as if the contemplation of the day ahead is almost too much too bear. The pain can intensify at certain times of the day, or it can just slowly slip away practically unobserved.
Chronic tension headaches are nowhere near as universal as standard tension headaches, but they are twice as common in women as in men.
The main problem with these headaches, besides the pain itself, is that they become a routine event. You wait for it to happen, you are that sure that it will escort you throughout the day as normal. The pain can just become one continuous drag on your life.
For this reason, sufferers of CTH are often vulnerable to depression and anxiety and it is difficult to know which came first, the CTH or the depression / anxiety and which is causing which. If you think this could be your problem, do not try to cure the headaches yourself, go to see a doctor about the depression or anxiety, have that sorted out and the chronic tension headaches may disappear too without any further medication.
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