What do you think is the easiest illness to diagnose? If you think headaches because they are the most common known to man, you are wrong. It’s not because they are common, that they are all the same.

First of all, your doctor can’t use a specific test for the diagnose., he can only work with what you, the patient, tells him. I think you can imagine that it is hard for a doctor when two persons, with the same symptoms, have an explanation that lies miles apart. He will have a hard time recognizing the symptoms out of your story.

And if that’s not hard enough, he has to keep in mind that there isn’t just one kind of headache, there are several different types of headaches. And with every type you have new causes and treatments.

Knowing that, were will a doctor start when diagnosing a headache? First, he will look at the type of pain you are having. If it’s a steady and diffuse pain, it’s probably a tension headache. If it’s more intense, it’s more likely to be a migraine. And if you are feeling an intense pain around one eye that occurs day after day for weeks, you will have cluster headaches.

When he has looked at the type of pain, he will see if you are experiencing other kinds of symptoms: sensitivity to light and sound, pins and needles in an arm or leg, coldness of hands and feet, nausea and vomiting. If you have these symptoms together with your headaches, you should tell this to your doctor.

All this information leads your doctor to a probable cause for your headaches and thus leads him to an effective treatment. If he can’t find the right diagnosis with these symptoms he can look further, and will order specific tests to see if there are other physical problems. But rest assure, in the vast majority of cases your doctor will be able to diagnose these quite easily and he will describe an effective course of treatment.