What causes pain in the upper right side of the head?

The head is the control center of the human body. Our daily actions are all commanded by the head center, which controls our behavior. The head is a very complex organ. There are many nerves and acupoints on our head. Sometimes when we are sick, we can relieve the symptoms by massaging the acupoints on the head. Headaches may also occur in the head, so what is the cause of pain in the upper right side of the head?

1. Causes

The cause of migraine is still unclear, but it may be related to the following factors:

2. Genetic Factors

About 60% of migraine patients have a family history, and the risk of migraine in their relatives is 3 to 6 times that of the general population. No consistent Mendelian inheritance pattern has been found in familial migraine patients, reflecting the interaction between different penetrances and polygenic genetic characteristics and environmental factors. Familial hemiplegic migraine is a clear autosomal dominant inheritance with highly abnormal penetrance, which has been located at three disease gene loci: 19p13 (associated with mistranslation mutations in the voltage-gated P/Q calcium channel gene expressed in the brain), 1q21, and 1q31.

3. Endocrine and metabolic factors

The disease occurs more frequently in females than in males, usually during adolescence, with attacks more likely to occur during menstruation, and attacks decrease or stop during pregnancy or after menopause. This suggests that endocrine and metabolic factors are involved in the pathogenesis of migraine. In addition, metabolic abnormalities such as serotonin (5-HT), norepinephrine, substance P and arachidonic acid can also affect the occurrence of migraine.

4. Diet and mental factors

Migraine attacks can be triggered by certain foods and drugs, including cheese containing tyramine, meat and pickled foods containing nitrite preservatives, chocolate containing phenylethylamine, food additives such as monosodium glutamate (MSG), red wine and wine, etc. Medications include oral contraceptives and vasodilators such as nitroglycerin. Other environmental and mental factors such as tension, overwork, emotional excitement, excessive or insufficient sleep, menstruation, and strong light can also trigger it.

Five pathogenesis

The pathogenesis of migraine is still unclear, but the main theories are as follows:

VI. Vascular Theory

Traditional vascular theory holds that migraine is a primary vascular disease. Intracranial vasoconstriction causes migraine prodromal symptoms, followed by extracranial and intracranial vasodilation, and the production of vasoactive peptides in the perivascular tissues, leading to aseptic inflammation and pulsating headaches. This theory is supported by the fact that local compression of the carotid and superficial temporal arteries and vasoconstrictors such as ergot alkaloids, such as ergotamine, can relieve headache attacks. The development of clinical applications of neuroimaging such as TCD and PET has further developed the vascular origin theory, proposing that migraine with aura and without aura are the same disease with different degrees of vasospasm. Various neurons have different sensitivities to ischemia. The appearance of prodromal symptoms is due to vasoconstriction. After the blood flow decreases, the neurons in the visual cortex are most sensitive to ischemia. Therefore, the visual prodromal symptoms appear first, and then more and more neuronal functions are affected, and then other neurological symptoms such as numbness of fingers gradually appear.