Barometric Pressure Headache

What is barometric pressure headache all about? 

It can be described as weather change, where you will feel a sudden pressure change. 

Same goes for your body, when the pressure in your body starts to decrease, here comes the headache.

Barometric pressure headache or what known as migraine; may not be accurately identified by most of the people. It is normally mistreat it as a “sinus” headache. The pain that was affected by migraine could happen on one side of the head, or both side. This is normally called headache on one side of head.  

Around 40 % of it centers on the forehead and the nose, which under this circumstance, is always been treated as “sinus”

If you are a migraine sufferer, there are some signs and symptoms you can look for before migraine really hits. For example, when the pressure around you is decreasing, or when the weather is very humid, it is often a sign that indicated the hitting of migraine. 

Up till now, there is no exact evidence to why pressure drop could cause barometric pressure headache. It is believed that when there is a change in barometric pressure, it could cause a slight change of pressure in your brain, which then triggers the nerve receptors to react and causes migraine.

Even though till now, with the advance of technology, the true reason that causes migraine or barometric pressure headache was not known.  But there are ways to control it. 

First, if you are a patient who takes medication constantly to treat your headache, medicines like anti-seizure, it is advised to increase the dosage slightly when the weathermen reported the falling of pressure. 

By increasing the dosage for several days, then bringing it back down to normal can numb somehow affects the physiological actions and numb the oncoming headache.

Second, increase magnesium intakes. Magnesium is another type of drug that could numb the formation of headache. For certain patients, it is normally advised to increase the dosage by 200mg to 400 mg per day when there is a change in pressure to halt the possible barometric pressure headache.

Next, if you are unable to stop barometric pressure headache from hitting you when there is a pressure change, the only thing you can do to reduce the pain is by taking your medicines as fast as possible. If you are consuming triptans as your medication, for instance, Imitrex, mix this medicine with other drugs such as Naprosyn and Aleve. 

The mixture of drug enhances the effectiveness of the treatment by staying long enough in your body to stop the barometric pressure headache from ongoing.

Lastly, nothing can be better than exercise to keep your body healthy. By doing aerobic exercise, it stimulates the production of serotonin and endorphin which helps in blunting the headache. 

Besides, exercise is not such a bad idea when the weather is bad. At the very least, you are being productive in helping your body to eradicate the pain.           

In summary, barometric pressure headache is caused by the change in pressure of our surroundings. If you are unfortunately a patient who suffers from this, paying a visit to the doctor would be the best choice as they can offer professional advice to you in what you can do to stop migraine from hitting you.