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Causes of Migraine Headaches
By Wendy Simons

Headaches in any form are very painful to the sufferer. Some headaches like migraines can cause more problems than just a headache. These problems could be nausea, light sensitivity and a throbbing pain in the head. Sometimes the headache pain is felt on one side of the head. At others you can feel the pain on both sides of your head. The actual causes of migraine headaches has not been found as of yet.

There are a few theories as to why we experience migraine headaches. The most common theory is that a change in the blood flow within the brain is one of the trigger causes of migraine headaches. The other theory about migraine headache is thought to be a pain sensing nerve releasing chemicals called neuropeptides.

Many medical professionals speculate that the neuropeptides relaxes the smooth muscle that surrounds the cranial blood vessels. This relaxation causes the blood vessels to dilate or become constricted. This blood vessel relaxation increases the flow of blood and other cranial fluid to the brain. These fluids are thought to be the causes of migraine headaches.

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

Another theory as to the causes of migraine headaches has been linked to genetics and inheritance. These theories state that a child of migraine sufferers will have a 50% chance of getting migraine headaches. The chances become even greater of inheriting migraine headaches if both parents are known to suffer from this painful headache.

Should both parents be known to have frequent migraine headaches the chances of the child inheriting migraine headache symptoms is about 70%. Now even though some professionals think that inheritance plays a large part in migraine headaches the genes that may be considered as the causes of migraine headaches have not been identified or even isolated.

When we begin to experience migraine headaches the only warning signs that we may receive are a throbbing pain in the temple area and light nausea. As the migraine symptoms progress the pain of the headaches become much worse. Unfortunately since the causes of migraine headaches have not been found and we don’t know what can trigger these attacks, the medications to treat these headaches have not been developed.

Author Details:
Wendy Simons, writes for various websites, mainly about skin care, microdermabrasion and other health matters. If you are looking for further information try these migraine articles from Simply Top

Source: The A to Z of Headaches

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