Chronic Diseases

Headache, the most common of all symptoms afflicting the human race. There are wide variety of causes which causes headaches. Most common of them are high blood pressure, psychological tensions, head injuries, etc. However most headaches come today and go tomorrow and are not related to any organic changes in brain.
You may find it strange but the brain itself is not sensitive to any pain. This gives us an idea that most headaches are not due to any actual damage within the brain itself. But remember any kind of stretching or pressure on the coverings of brain will most certainly cause severe pain or headache. In headache, pain is actually experienced by the person mainly through his blood vessels which supplies blood to the brain which are very sensitive to pain. The distension, distortion, inflammation of the blood vessels is felt as pain. In almost every case headache pain comes from outside the skull as anything that affects blood supply of brain can cause pain to be registered on the receptors of pain in the arteries and veins involved. The origin is the tissues lying outside of the skull which are under the skin, which are the muscles and blood vessels of the scalp and neck. The actual source of pain is the end of pain nerve. Inflammation within the head, such as meningitis will cause severe pain over the entire head. However those cases are extremely rare. Tumors growing within the head may press upon the meningeal covering of dura which leads to extreme pain on the side of the head where the tumor is present. Various types of headaches will be discussed in the other posts.