A set of questions to work through, and why ‘both’ is the most common and most useful answer.
Recurrent midline belly pain in a child with normal tests between episodes – and the exclusions that must come first.
Aura is a slow neural wave, not vessel spasm. What that means, and the features that separate it from a TIA.
A deep, aching, or pressure-like pain behind one or both eyes is one of the more unsettling headache patterns, because it feels like it's coming from somewhere so close to your vision itself. Most of the time, this pain has an identifiable and manageable cause. Occasionally, it's a signal that something needs urgent attention. Understanding…
A headache that consistently shows up on just one side of your head — always the left, always the right, never both — can feel different from an ordinary headache, and for good reason. One-sided (unilateral) head pain has a specific list of likely causes, and knowing which one fits your pattern can help you…
Jaw pain. Headache. Clicking or popping when you chew. Pressure behind the eyes or temples that seems to radiate from your jaw up into your skull. If you've ever had these symptoms together, you've probably wondered which condition is actually driving the bus — is this a migraine that's affecting your jaw, or a jaw…
If you've ever felt a sudden flash of light in your vision, a wave of numbness down one arm, or a headache unlike any you've had before, you've probably had the same thought that crosses every migraine sufferer's mind at some point: is this just another migraine, or is something more serious happening? It's not…
If you've ever had facial pressure, a stuffy nose, and a pounding headache and assumed it was "just sinuses," you're in good company—and you're very likely wrong. Research on this exact question has found that when people with recurring "sinus headaches" were carefully evaluated against real diagnostic criteria, roughly 88-90% of them actually had migraine,…
You've had headaches for years. Maybe you've even been told it's migraine. But the pain always seems to start in the same spot at the back of your skull, your neck feels stiff and tender before it hits, and pressing on certain spots in your neck seems to bring the exact same headache back. Is…
They're both severe. They're both disabling. And they're both, far too often, confused for one another — sometimes for years. But migraine and cluster headache are fundamentally different conditions, with different patterns, different triggers, and different treatment paths. Getting the diagnosis right matters, because the wrong one leads to the wrong treatment.
Here's how to…