Women Hormonal Headaches Symptoms

Headaches due to hormonal imbalances are experienced by many women. Such headaches are closely related to the reproductive cycle of a woman. Imbalance in level of oestrogen and other hormones particular to women are a direct cause of headaches. Such a headache may be caused by premenstrual hormonal changes or changes of hormonal level that take place during menstrual cycle or it can also be associated with menopause. Women who take birth control pills are also likely to suffer from headaches. Due to hormonal changes during pregnancy and post delivery a woman can complain of headaches.

Headache caused due to hormonal changes is often mistaken as headache due to migraine because the symptoms in both the cases are identical. As in the case of migraine, a woman who is affected with hormonal change headache may have pain on one side of the head and can be associated with nausea and vomiting. The patient is unable to tolerate light or sound. This type of headache can last for a few hours. The severity and period of headache depend upon person to person and from time to time. Sometimes a woman may experience dull pain and at another time very severe pain in her head.

Women who regularly suffer from menstrual cycle related headache are able to identify the relationship between the two. Due to closeness of the symptoms the doctors may get confused. It is interesting that the treatment for both types of headaches is the same. Another interesting fact to be noticed in this case is that in some cases, birth control pills are a cause of hormonal changes resulting in hormonal headache, while in case of some women, birth control pills are given to control headache by changing the hormonal level. When a woman starts to take birth control pills she may start to suffer from headache, this will slowly fade as the body gets accustomed to hormonal changes.

During the first trimester of pregnancy, this type of headache is quite common, similarly in early stages after menopause a woman can suffer from this. Except for pregnancy related headaches, other types of hormonal headaches can be controlled with medicines. Treatment should start the moment one gets indication of occurrence of such a headache, still better in case of recurring cases treatment should start a day or two before the likely start. Medicines should be strictly taken as per the advice of the doctor. Over the counter drugs should not be tried as these may not be fully safe and may have some side effects.