Why do we have a headache?
This discomfort is familiar to almost everyone.
Cluster headaches, which occur in cyclical patterns or cluster periods, are one of the most painful types of headache.
A cluster headache commonly awakens you in the middle of the night with intense pain in or around one eye on one side of your head.
Bouts of frequent attacks, known as cluster periods, can last from weeks to months, usually followed by remission periods when the headaches stop. During remission, no headaches occur for months and sometimes even years.
Fortunately, cluster headache is rare and not life-threatening. Treatments can make cluster headache attacks shorter and less severe. In addition, medications can reduce the number of cluster headaches you have.
Symptoms
A cluster headache strikes quickly, usually without warning, although you might first have migraine-like nausea and aura.
Common signs and symptoms during a headache include:
- Excruciating pain that is generally situated in, behind or around one eye, but may radiate to other areas of your face, head and neck
- One-sided pain
- Restlessness
- Excessive tearing
- Redness of your eye on the affected side
- Stuffy or runny nose on the affected side
- Forehead or facial sweating on the affected side
- Pale skin (pallor) or flushing on your face
- Swelling around your eye on the affected side
- Drooping eyelid on the affected side
Causes
The exact cause of cluster headaches is unknown, but cluster headache patterns suggest that abnormalities in the body's biological clock (hypothalamus) play a role.
Unlike migraine and tension headache, cluster headache generally isn't associated with triggers, such as foods, hormonal changes or stress.
Once a cluster period begins, however, drinking alcohol may quickly trigger a splitting headache. For this reason, many people with cluster headache avoid alcohol during a cluster period.
Risk factors
Risk factors for cluster headaches include:
- Sex. Men are more likely to have cluster headaches.
- Age. Most people who develop cluster headaches are between ages 20 and 50, although the condition can develop at any age.
- Smoking.
- Alcohol use.
- A family history.
Source:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cluster-headache/symptoms-causes/syc-20352080
