Dealing With Headaches

When you have to get up, you have to get up, whether for work, school, emptying your bladder or taking the dog out to empty his or her bladder. You might not consider yourself a morning person. One of these reasons may be because you tend to gt headaches in the morning. They’re not as bad as migraines, cluster headaches or getting hit in the head with a sledgehammer headache, but they are pretty painful and can definately get the work week off to a bad start.

Well, you are not alone. This kind of headache has a name — chronic morning headache. And if it has a name, then many people must suffer from it. Correct. According to a 2004 European study, 1 in 13 people have chronic morning headache. The two groups most affected were women and anybody in the age group 45-64.

What’s Up With That?

At first, it was thought that chronic morning headache was from such sleep disorders as grinding your teeth, night terrors (where you act out your bad dreams) or sleep apnea. But in this 2004 study of over 19,000 European volunteers, most of those afflicted with chronic morning headache also had some form of depression.

Depression’s worst symptoms can often hit especially bad in the morning. Not all of those diagnosed with depression will get chronic morning headaches (some feel worse in the evening and adore the mornings) but if have chronic morning headaches, be really honest with yourself that you might have depression. The disease depression (also called major depression or clinical depression) can often manifest in strange physical symptoms. At the very least, get your blood pressure checked.

If you are daignosed with depression or high blood pressure, there are many medications and diet changes you can do to help ease not only your overall condition, but your severity and number of headaches in the monring.

What If You’re Not Depressed

There are other reasons that you may be getting chronic morning headache other than depression, high blood pressure or sleep disorders. Headaches — even to the point of migraines — are a main withdrawal symptom from caffeine. The easiest way to diagnose if you have a caffeine dependency is to, on your day off, not touch anything with caffeine in it for 24 hours. That means no coffe, no soda, no tea (except herbal) and no chocolate. If you get a migraine then BINGO you have discovered you are caffeine dependent and need to start reducing your caffeine intake.

The National Headache Foundation also has this information about some of the physical changes that may be goin on when you wake up:

Between about 4 AM and 8 AM, the body tends to produce less of its natural painkillers, the endorphins and enkephalins, than at other times of the day. Adrenalin is released in larger quantities during the early morning hours. Since adrenalin affects blood pressure and the regulation of dilation or contraction of the blood vessels, it may play a role in migraine attacks.

Rarely, serious diseases may cause early morning awakening headaches. These diseases may include brain tumors, sleep apnea, and severe high blood pressure.

Treatment

If you have morning headaches for over 15 days in a row, congradulations, you have chronic morning headache. Since we have seen that there are so many possible sources for chronic morning headaches, you need to get a proper diagnosis in order to be able to treat them. The good news is that they are treatable, since they do seem to be a part of an overall health problem rather than just a mysterious pain in the brain. Many people — especially if they are caffeine dependant — find that first cup of coffee gets rid of the headache for that morning. Some people also get relief from over the counter medications targeted for tension headaches.

Hope this helps. And happy Labor Day.