If you experience a kind of agony that seem to be affected by various weather changes, then you should pay more attention to your symptoms. In that case, you might be suffering from what is known as a barometric pressure headache.
The difficult part about experiencing this type of a pain is that it makes planning for vacations and holidays more challenging. It is also often confused with other health conditions which makes barometric pressure headache treatment more tricky.
Our bodies are very sensitive to the elements, even if we don’t really think about it since we wear clothes and live much of our lives in heat-controlled environments.
One of the ways in which our bodies can respond to the elements is to develop head pain. This is because our face and skull has cavities which will respond to the surrounding air pressure in your environment.
Background
To understand more about this condition, it’s helpful to find out more about what the term really means. To clarify, barometric pressure is the pressure in the air as applied to our bodies. As we mentioned above, our sinuses are filled with air and this means that any change in the pressure can trigger head pain.
For example, a drop in pressure has been associated with migraine-like symptoms. In some cases, patients can experience other symptoms which include facial numbness, sensitivity to light and gastric disturbance.
The truth is that even an insignificant change in the pressure can trigger pain in migraine patients. A slight drop or increase in pressure can cause a lot of pain and discomfort. Symptoms vary in intensity and frequency to a great extent, which makes this condition rather difficult for doctors to diagnose.
The best thing you can do is to keep a journal in order to keep track of your symptoms. You should write notes about the frequency of your pain, how long it lasts and whether it gets triggered by changes in altitude or temperature. These notes will help your doctor find a pattern in order to determine the right triggers, and come up with the best barometric pressure headache treatment.
Barometric Pressure Headache Treatment Options
Although there are a lot of tests that can help diagnose various types of migraines, diagnosing and coming up with remedial options is quite different. Due to the nature of this kind of condition, which is linked to external circumstances, neurological exams and CT scans might not be the best ways to detect and hence diagnose the condition.
Like we suggested above, keeping a detailed journal will help your doctor prescribe the right kind of treatment for you, according to your individual physiology. However, in addition to just recording what you are experiencing, there are some ways to relieve the symptoms.
Medication
Most patients benefit from over-the-counter medication (OTCs) since they can relieve pain and help patients enjoy a better quality of life. In more severe cases, doctors will try prescription medications that usually show very good results. Botox injections can also help with the pain of the migraine symptoms associated with this ailment, since they block nerve transmissions.
If deemed to be a suitable option by a qualified medical professional, a patient might consider taking a Botox shot every few months in order to keep their head pain in check. It’s important to note here that the pain doesn’t go away on the spot and the effects might take a few ways to show, but they usually last for a while. Once it wears off, the doctor will schedule for another treatment. In the most severe cases, doctors might consider doing surgery, although this is left as the last option.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, since this condition is not properly understood, and not always easy to diagnose, it should noted that it is always easier to avoid this kind of head pain than to treat it.
For effective barometric pressure headache treatment, patients should take an OTC or prescription drug as soon as they start to experience a migraine or head pain-like symptoms. Unless you consult with a doctor and find out what the underlying causes of this ailment are, the only true way to avoid the symptoms is to avoid putting yourself in a situation where changes in pressure could affect you negatively.
As is always suggested for maintaining optimal health, in addition to becoming aware of your triggers and avoiding environments with potentially damaging changes in pressure, patients should also stick to a healthy lifestyle in order to avoid episodes.
In many cases, sleeping for 7 to 8 hours daily helps patients manage their pain and live comfortably. Paying attention to other symptoms like nausea or ringing in the ears can also help you detect the episode even before it starts.
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