It can be hard at times to tell the difference between a headache and a migraine. They both involve a pain in the head. So what separates the two?
Tension headaches, as the name suggests, are often linked to a buildup of mental or physical stress or tension. However stress is not thought to be the initial cause of migraines. Instead recent thought and research studies suggest that there may be underlying factors such as inbuilt genetic tendencies that are the main cause; stress simply acts as a trigger.
The main difference between the two conditions is that migraines don’t just involve having a headache. In fact some migraine sufferers don’t get a headache at all during their attacks, but instead only experience symptoms such as nausea, numbness and visual disturbances (whereas those who get tension headaches clearly do get head pain).
One of the biggest distinguishing factors is that tension headaches don’t involve having a prodrome warning phase whereas migraines do. For migrainers this often means an aura which includes some of the symptoms listed above. Tension headaches don’t tend to have any other additional symptoms aside from head pain.
They are not the same thing, but tension headaches, although independent from migraines, can lead to a migraine attack in existing sufferers if the headache is not treated quickly.
DISCLAIMER – When using any medication, always read the label and make sure you keep all medicines out of reach of children. The information supplied within this online resource is brought to you by Imigran Recovery Tablets (contains sumatriptan) for migraine relief, from a variety of author sources including health care professionals, lifestyle experts and the general public. None of the published authors endorse any brands.
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