The Causes of Migraine Headaches

By Marion Jones

Headaches in any form are always very painful to the sufferer. However, some headaches, like migraines, for example, can create even more problems than just a headache. These problems could be nausea, light sensitivity and a throbbing pain in the head. Sometimes the headache is felt on one side of the head, although at other times you can feel the pain on both sides of your head at the same time.

The real causes of migraine headaches has not yet been discovered, although there are some theories why we have migraine headaches. The most common theory is that an alteration in the blood flow within the brain is one of the triggers that causes migraine headaches. Another theory about migraine headache is that it could possibly be caused by pain sensing chemicals called neuropeptides.

Many medical professionals think that neuropeptides relax the muscle that surrounds the cranial blood vessels. This relaxation causes the blood vessels to dilate. The relaxed blood vessels increase the flow of blood and other cranial fluid to the brain. This increase in fluids is thought to be the cause of migraine headaches.

These cranial fluids cause swelling, pain, sensitivity, tissue and blood vessel inflammation during the time of the migraine headaches. Some people think that the aura that is sometimes seen during a migraine headache is caused by the constriction of the blood vessels that became dilated during the starting period of the migraine headache.

Another theory about the reason for migraine headaches has been linked to the genetics of inheritance. These theories state that a child of migraine sufferers will have a 50% chance of getting migraine headaches as well.

The probability of inheriting migraine headaches is even greater if both parents are sufferers of this painful type of headache. If both parents are known to have frequent migraine headaches the chances of the child having migraine headache symptoms rises to about 70%.

Even though many professionals are persuaded that genetics plays a big part in migraine headaches, the genes that are considered to be the causes of migraine headaches have not been identified or even isolated yet. When we start to experience migraine headaches the only warning signs that we may expect to receive are a throbbing pain in the temple area and slight sickness.

As the symptoms of the migraine progresses, the pain becomes much more severe. Unfortunately, since the causes of migraine headaches have yet to be found and we don't know what triggers these attacks, there are no medications to cure this sort of headaches yet. - 30309

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