40 Fun Facts About Headaches

Brain freeze begins when something icy touches which part of the body, sending pain to the forehead?

The roof of the mouth has blood vessels that tighten and swell at the sudden chill, and the alarm is passed on as if the pain came from the head.

In Greek myth, which goddess was born from the head of Zeus after he suffered an unbearable headache?

Athena leapt out fully grown and armed, in most tellings after an axe split his skull open. Hesiod says Zeus had earlier swallowed her pregnant mother, Metis.

Which painkiller did British chemist Stewart Adams, who led its discovery, try on his own hangover?

Ibuprofen cleared its inventor's vodka hangover before a conference speech in Moscow, after the drug had already gone on sale in Britain in 1969 as a prescription arthritis medicine.

A bedtime cup of which drink is a recognised treatment for hypnic headaches, which wake older adults from sleep?

Coffee before bed sounds backwards, yet one or two cups can prevent these attacks, which tend to strike at the same hour every night.

A dull headache is the most common symptom of poisoning by which invisible gas from faulty heaters and furnaces?

Carbon monoxide poisoning is often mistaken for flu, because the headache tends to arrive with dizziness, weakness and vomiting.

Salicin, a chemical forerunner of the headache pill aspirin, is found in the bark of which tree?

Willow bark won medical attention in 1763, when the English clergyman Edward Stone told the Royal Society how the powdered bark had eased fevers.

Doctors give which stormy name to a severe headache that hits full force almost instantly and needs emergency care?

Thunderclap headache can be the only warning of bleeding around the brain, a link the London neurologist Charles Symonds described in the 1920s.

Which type of headache, usually a dull ache felt on both sides of the head, is the most common of all?

Tension headache is more widespread even than migraine, and everyday painkillers such as aspirin or paracetamol usually settle it.

Which stimulant is added to some headache tablets, yet causes withdrawal headaches when regular users suddenly stop?

Caffeine withdrawal can also bring sleepiness and irritability, which is why a missed morning cup can sour a whole day.

A Chinese text of about 30 BCE naming the 'Big Headache Mountains' is credited as the earliest account of which illness?

Altitude sickness makes headache its main early symptom, and the old name is thought to describe passes in the Karakoram range.

Roman physician Scribonius Largus recorded treating headaches by applying which live sea creature to the patient?

An electric ray, the torpedo fish, was pressed into service for its shocks, and the same first-century text prescribes the jolt for gout as well.

Factory workers making which explosive got 'Monday disease' headaches after losing their tolerance over the weekend?

Nitroglycerin widens blood vessels, so every return to work brought a racing heart, dizziness and a pounding head. That same effect has made it a medicine for angina since 1878.

Breathing which pure gas through a mask is a standard way to stop a cluster headache attack in its tracks?

Oxygen is a first-choice treatment for an attack, whose pain bores in around one eye and can last anywhere from 15 minutes to three hours.

Which German company began selling aspirin in 1899 and also marketed heroin as a cough remedy?

Bayer coined Aspirin as a brand name, then lost or sold the trademark in many countries, which is how the word became an everyday one.

Which ancient practice of boring a hole in the skull is popularly, but doubtfully, said to have treated headaches?

Trepanation owes its headache story to the physician William Osler, who made the link in 1913. No solid evidence shows Stone Age healers opened skulls for that reason.

A severe headache with fever and a stiff neck is the classic warning pattern of which dangerous infection?

Meningitis inflames the membranes wrapped around the brain, which can hurt even though brain tissue itself has no pain receptors.

Children with a headache or fever are not given aspirin because of its link to which rare, dangerous illness?

Reye's syndrome, a fast-moving brain illness, became more than 90% rarer after aspirin was withdrawn for children in the 1980s.

Paracetamol, a standard remedy for a mild headache, goes by which other generic name in the United States?

Acetaminophen and paracetamol are both clipped from chemical names for the same compound, coined by rival drug firms a year apart in the 1950s.

Taking painkillers on too many days each month can itself cause which self-perpetuating kind of headache?

Rebound headaches can strike daily, and for simple painkillers the danger line is use on 15 or more days a month for over three months.

The headache that can follow a spinal tap or epidural is distinctive because it eases in which position?

Lying down helps because spinal fluid leaking through the needle hole lowers the pressure around the brain, and being upright makes the drop worse.

The external compression headache, caused by tight headwear, is also named after which item worn in the pool?

Swim goggles pressing on the forehead are a classic cause, though tight hats, helmets, headbands and even headphones can do the same.

Bruxism, which can leave people with headaches and an aching jaw on waking, is the medical name for which habit?

Teeth grinding often goes unnoticed because it happens during sleep, and the ache it causes tends to settle in the temples before easing through the day.

Bourbon tends to give a worse hangover headache than vodka because it contains far more of which by-products?

Congeners form as a drink ferments and ages, and bourbon carries about 37 times as many of them as vodka does.

A British pharmacist noticed his wife, on MAOI antidepressants, got severe headaches after eating which food?

Cheese, above all the strong aged kinds, is rich in tyramine, which those drugs stop the body from clearing. Doctors came to call the result the cheese reaction.

Which flavour enhancer was blamed for 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' headaches, a link blinded tests have not confirmed?

Monosodium glutamate got its bad name from a 1968 letter to a medical journal, which early readers took for a joke before the scare caught on.

Which cranial nerve, which also powers biting and chewing, is activated during a migraine attack?

Trigeminal means roughly 'triplet': on each side of the head the nerve splits into three branches, serving the eye, the upper jaw and the lower jaw.

Aspirin takes its name from Spiraea, the old botanical name of which wild plant rich in salicylic acid?

Meadowsweet gave the word its middle syllable, while the opening letter stands for the acetyl group that chemists added in the laboratory.

Which name is given to the flashing lights or zigzag lines that some people see shortly before a migraine headache?

Aura usually lasts between five minutes and an hour, and it is mostly visual because the disturbance starts in the part of the brain that handles sight.

Headache is the most common symptom of which injury, often picked up in contact sports such as rugby?

Concussion needs no knockout: fewer than one in ten sports-related cases in children is thought to involve any loss of consciousness.

A severe headache in late pregnancy can be a warning sign of which condition marked by high blood pressure?

Pre-eclampsia can tip over into seizures, and a headache is the most consistent warning that this is about to happen.

Doctors use which word for a headache, such as a migraine, that is not caused by any other medical condition?

Primary headaches happen on their own, whereas a secondary one is a symptom of something else, from a head cold to a head injury.

Which formal medical term for a headache also names, with '-phobia' added, the fear of getting one?

Cephalalgia is the word doctors write for a headache, and people who live in dread of the next attack are said to have cephalalgiaphobia.

Headaches after hours of screen work are a common sign of which condition, known medically as asthenopia?

Eye strain responds to planned breaks, which have been shown to cut both the discomfort and the headaches that come with it.

Which kind of headache is often self-diagnosed, yet in most cases turns out to be a migraine?

Sinus headache is an easy mistake to make, because a migraine can bring a stuffy nose of its own, though without the thick discharge of a true infection.

Taking too much paracetamol for a headache is dangerous chiefly because of the damage it does to which organ?

The liver bears the brunt: paracetamol poisoning is the foremost cause of acute liver failure in many countries.

Which drink has a headache named after it, blamed at various times on its histamine and its sulphites?

Red wine takes the blame for its sulphites, yet dried fruit and processed lunch meat contain more of them.

Which injection, better known for smoothing wrinkles, is also used to prevent chronic migraine?

Botox is usually held in reserve for people whose chronic migraine has not responded to other preventive medicines.

A migraine-linked syndrome that makes objects seem to shrink or grow is named after which storybook character?

Alice changes size again and again in Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel, and in adults the syndrome named after her is most often tied to migraine.

A new headache after age 50, with a tender scalp and jaw pain when chewing, points to which artery disease?

Temporal arteritis is treated as an emergency, because the inflammation can block the artery to the eye and cause sudden, permanent blindness.

People with new daily persistent headache can usually recall which detail, a quirk doctors use in diagnosis?

The date it started sticks in the memory because the pain arrives abruptly and then never lifts. In one study over 80% of patients could name the exact day.