Headache covers symptoms in both skull and upper neck regions, resulting from either primary illnesses, or secondary to original medical problems.

Painful signals could be originated from irritated blood vessels, neural tissues, muscle and tendon, or joints. Different sources of headache have its own characters of pain or collateral sypmtoms, such as visual disturbance or hearing problems.

Maigraine and Tension Headache
There are two main categories of headache, namely, Primary and Secondary Headache. Primary headache refers to the pain originated from head, including Tension Headache, Migraine, Cluster Headache and Trigeminal Neuralgia. As for Secondary headache, it is the painful symptom developed subsequently after original medical diseases. For example, high blood pressure can cause headache.
Health practitioners would first ask for details of history of symptoms and natures of discomfort, aiming at differentiating sources of pain and helping draft of subsequent examination, or further referral to medical professionals.
Among different kinds of headache, tension headache is the main reason for the illnesses, which can account for 90% of clinical head painful cases. Within the category of tension headache, it includes several subtypes such as Infrequent Episodic Tension-Headache type, Frequent Episodic Tension-type Headache and Chronic Tension-type Headache. Generally speaking, patients suffering tension headache would complaint of both side head painful discomfort, with collateral symptoms such as tender scalp and low emotional mod. In long lasting headache cases, there aren’t stranger to find emotion being depressed and painful neck, as well.
Rather than persistent tension type headache, migraine or cluster headache would be characterized as single side pulse like painful conditions. The majority of throbbing headache are due to migraine, and only 1% is caused by cluster headache. According to result of prevalence study, 60% of migraine sufferers would complain of one side symptom and they are more likely suffering being so sensitive to light and noise. The study also found female gender is the main group in migraine sufferers, from the age of 22 to 55. Within the domain types of migraine, usual migraine symptoms include longer time of attack of headache lasting 4 to half day, while typical migraine sustain only 1 hour in each time of symptom attack.
HOW TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE AND PHYSIOTHERAPY HELP?
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Spinal Endurance ExerciseImprove shoulder and neck endurance.
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Ear StimulationLong lasting pain relief and claming down.
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ErgonomicsAdvices for ergonomic implementation.
References:
Liu, S., Wang, Z., Su, Y., Qi, L., Yang, W., Fu, M., Jing, X., Wang, Y., & Ma, Q. (2021). A neuroanatomical basis for electroacupuncture to drive the vagal–adrenal axis. Nature, 598(7882), 641–645. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04001-4





