What is a headache?

A headache refers to any pain anywhere over the head, whether it is over the face, the eyes, the nose, the ear. So in strict medical terminology, any pain in the head is a headache. In common parlance, most of us think of a headache as something begin over the forehead or over the temple, and, yes, that is strictly true. But in medical terminology, it's much more than that. It is, in fact, any pain anywhere. And the things to appreciate about headaches are that they're very variable. They can be very mild like a normal tension [inaudible] that a lot of us will have, to excruciating and very severe. And what is worth really appreciating is that a significant proportion of patients, at least about 15% of the population, in any one year will have a headache that is highly disabling. In fact, the World Health Organization states that when you start looking at disability due to headache disorders, then it is one of the ten most common causes of disability with which people live.